Hadith Text
وَعَنْ أَبِي سَعِيدٍ وَأَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُمَا عَنِ النَّبِيِّ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ قَالَ: «مَا يُصِيبُ الْمُسْلِمَ مِنْ نَصَبٍ وَلَا وَصَبٍ وَلَا هَمٍّ وَلَا حَزَنٍ وَلَا أَذىً وَلَا غَمٍّ، حَتَّى الشَّوْكَةُ يُشَاكُهَا إِلَّا كَفَّرَ اللَّهُ بِهَا مِنْ خَطَايَاهُ». مُتَّفَقٌ عَلَيْهِ.
Full Translation
On the authority of Abu Sa’id and Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with them both) from the Prophet ﷺ who said:
“Nothing befalls the Muslim — no fatigue, no illness, no worry, no grief, no harm, no distress — not even a thorn that pricks him — except that Allah expiates some of his sins through it.”
Agreed upon.
Meanings of Key Words
- Ma yusibu al-muslim (مَا يُصِيبُ الْمُسْلِمَ) — nothing befalls the Muslim; ma is the comprehensive negation — not some things, not most things, not the major things only. Nothing. The scope is total before the list even begins. And the subject is al-Muslim — the believer specifically; this reality, like the one in Hadith 27, belongs to the one whose faith gives the suffering a frame and a destination
- Nasab (نَصَبٌ) — fatigue, physical exhaustion; the tiredness that comes from sustained physical effort — the weariness in the muscles and bones after labour. Not illness — the healthy body that has been worked to its limit
- Wasab (وَصَبٌ) — illness, chronic pain, physical disease; a persistent bodily condition, pain that settles in and stays. The scholars distinguish it from nasab: nasab is the exhaustion of effort, wasab is the suffering of sickness
- Hamm (هَمٌّ) — worry, anxiety, preoccupation with future harm; the mental state of someone whose mind is occupied with what might happen, what could go wrong, what threat is approaching. Hamm is forward-looking — it lives in anticipated suffering
- Huzn (حُزْنٌ) — grief, sadness, sorrow; the emotional state of someone who has already lost something or someone. Huzn is backward-looking — it lives in what has passed, what is gone, what is mourned. Together, hamm and huzn cover the full temporal range of human emotional suffering: anxiety about the future, grief over the past
- Adhan (أَذىً) — harm, injury, hurt; a broad word covering physical harm, social harm, harm to one’s honour or dignity — anything from a wound to an insult to being treated unjustly. The scholars note its breadth: it includes being spoken against, being wronged, being disrespected, being physically injured
- Ghamm (غَمٌّ) — distress, oppression of the chest, constriction; the feeling of something pressing down on the heart — a heaviness that is not quite grief and not quite anxiety but a suffocating weight. The root is related to covering — as if something has been placed over the heart and is pressing down on it
- Hatta al-shawkatu yushaakuha (حَتَّى الشَّوْكَةُ يُشَاكُهَا) — not even a thorn that pricks him; hatta is the particle of extreme limit — “even to the point of.” After listing six categories of suffering ranging from physical exhaustion to grief to existential distress, the Prophet ﷺ descends to the smallest possible example: a thorn. A single thorn. The prick of a point against the skin. The briefest, most trivial, most quickly forgotten of physical discomforts. Even that
- Kaffara Allahu biha min khatayahu (كَفَّرَ اللَّهُ بِهَا مِنْ خَطَايَاهُ) — except that Allah expiates some of his sins through it; kaffara — to expiate, to cover, to wipe away. And min — some of. Not necessarily all sins are wiped by each instance of suffering — but some portion of the account of wrongs is cleared. Every instance of suffering is working on the believer’s record, reducing what stands against them, lightening what they will face
Hadith Lessons
After the great heights of the preceding hadiths — the martyr’s reward for patience in plague, Paradise for the loss of the eyes, the woman who chose Jannah over cure, the prophet forgiving while bleeding — Imam al-Nawawi brings the chapter to this. The thorn.
The deliberate descent from the sublime to the infinitesimal is the lesson. The chapter has established that the greatest sufferings produce the greatest rewards. Now it establishes that the smallest sufferings — the ones so minor that they are forgotten within minutes — are also not wasted. Nothing is wasted. Not one moment of discomfort in the life of a Muslim passes without being received by Allah and used to clear some portion of their account.
The Six Categories — A Complete Map of Human Suffering
The Prophet ﷺ does not say “hardship” and stop there. He enumerates — and the enumeration is a taxonomy of human suffering so complete that the scholars have marvelled at its comprehensiveness. Six categories, covering every dimension of how difficulty enters a human life:
Nasab — the suffering of the working body. The person who labours physically, who carries burdens, who builds and farms and walks and works until the body is spent. Every ache of honest labour is counted.
Wasab — the suffering of the sick body. The person who lies ill, who endures chronic pain, who lives inside a body that is not functioning as it should. Every day of sickness is counted.
Hamm — the suffering of the anxious mind. The person who lies awake worrying, whose thoughts will not settle, who carries the weight of anticipated harm. Every night of anxiety is counted.
Huzn — the suffering of the grieving heart. The person who mourns a loss, who carries sadness, who misses what is gone. Every tear of genuine grief is counted.
Adha — the suffering of being wronged. The person who is harmed by others — physically, socially, verbally, in their reputation or their rights. Every injustice endured is counted.
Ghamm — the suffering of oppressive weight. The person who feels crushed, constricted, overwhelmed by a heaviness they cannot fully name or explain. Every moment of that pressing darkness is counted.
Six categories. Body in labour. Body in sickness. Mind in anxiety. Heart in grief. Person under injustice. Soul under weight. After these six — which together cover every form of suffering a human being can experience — the Prophet ﷺ says: and even a thorn.
The Thorn — Why the Prophet ﷺ Descended This Far
The thorn is not an afterthought. It is the culminating point of the hadith — the rhetorical device that makes the teaching complete. The six categories are vast. A listener might accept that major suffering expiates sins — illness, grief, persecution. Those are significant. They require patience. They cost something real.
But the thorn? The prick of a point that makes you wince for a moment and then is gone — does that count? Is anything really being wiped from the account by something so small?
Hatta — the Prophet ﷺ insists on it. Even that. Even the thorn. The mechanism of expiation is not calibrated by the magnitude of the suffering alone — it is universal. Every instance of discomfort in the life of a Muslim, however small, is received by Allah and applied to the account.
The scholars of hadith note that this teaching has a profound practical consequence: it transforms the entire experience of daily life for the believer who internalises it. There is no neutral moment of discomfort. There is no wasted suffering. The headache, the aching foot, the difficult conversation, the exhaustion at the end of a long day, the sadness that arrives without announcement, the worry that won’t leave — all of it is working. All of it is being received. All of it is being applied.
Expiation — What Is Being Cleared
Kaffara min khatayahu — expiates some of his sins.
The word khataya is the plural of khati’ah — a sin, a wrong act, something on the record of deeds that stands against the person. The believer’s account, in the Islamic framework of divine reckoning, contains both good deeds and wrongs. What stands against a person on the Day of Judgement is what needs to be addressed — either by repentance, by good deeds that outweigh them, by divine forgiveness, or by what this hadith describes: the expiation that comes through suffering borne in this world.
The suffering is not punishment. It is not evidence of divine displeasure. It is, in the Islamic framework, one of the mechanisms of divine mercy — the clearing of what stands against the believer before they reach Allah, so that they arrive with a lighter account than they would otherwise carry. The person who suffers in this world and bears it as a Muslim — even without conscious patience, simply by virtue of being a Muslim who endured it — has that suffering working on their behalf.
The scholars note that the hadith does not require patience as a condition here — unlike Hadith 34 (blindness) and Hadith 33 (plague), which explicitly require sabr and ihtisab. This hadith says simply: what befalls the Muslim. The expiation happens by virtue of the suffering itself, in the life of the believer. Patience and ihtisab would increase and elevate the reward — but the basic expiation of sins through suffering is given without conditions beyond being a Muslim.
Two Narrators — Abu Sa’id and Abu Hurayrah Together
This hadith is narrated by two companions simultaneously — Abu Sa’id al-Khudri and Abu Hurayrah, both present, both transmitting the same hadith together. This double transmission is noted by the scholars as a mark of particular weight — two major companions who heard the same words at the same time, and both preserved them.
Abu Sa’id al-Khudri has appeared earlier in this chapter (Hadith 26 — the Ansar asking the Prophet ﷺ until his hands were empty). Abu Hurayrah is the most prolific narrator of hadith in the entire Sunnah — the companion who devoted himself to memorisation and transmission with an intensity unmatched in the early community. Their joint narration of this particular hadith — the one that promises expiation down to the thorn — is as if the tradition is saying: this teaching is too important to rest on a single narrator. Two witnesses. One teaching.
Where This Hadith Sits in the Chapter’s Architecture
The chapter on patience in Riyad al-Salihin has moved from the grand to the granular — from the theology of patience as half of faith, to the woman at the fire’s edge, to the prophet wiping blood while asking forgiveness, and now to this: the thorn.
The movement is intentional. Imam al-Nawawi is building a complete picture of what it means to live as a Muslim in a world of suffering. The picture includes:
- The greatest trials (plague, blindness, the loss of the most beloved)
- The medium trials (illness, worry, grief, persecution)
- And now — the smallest trials (the thorn, the prick, the momentary discomfort)
All of them are within the same divine economy. All of them are being received. All of them are being used. The believer who understands this does not need a catastrophe to be engaged in the work of expiation and reward. Every day of ordinary life — with its ordinary fatigue and ordinary worries and ordinary small pains — is a day in which the account is being worked on, the record is being lightened, the meeting with Allah is being prepared.
The Theological Gift This Hadith Gives
The greatest practical gift of this hadith is the elimination of wasted suffering. In a framework without this teaching, suffering that is not dramatic enough to require obvious patience — the cold, the headache, the difficult sleep, the passing sadness — is simply unpleasant and then gone. It leaves nothing behind. It accomplishes nothing.
In the framework this hadith establishes, that suffering has been received. It has been logged. It has been applied. The believer does not need to perform patience visibly, does not need to make a spiritual act of every moment of discomfort — the mechanism operates by virtue of their Islam and their suffering meeting. The thorn pricks them. Allah expiates some of what stands against them. They move on with a slightly lighter account than they had a moment before.
This does not mean suffering is sought or welcomed in a masochistic sense — the Prophet ﷺ regularly made du’a for ‘afiyah — wellbeing and freedom from affliction. But when the thorn comes — and it always comes, because the thorn is simply what life in a physical world produces — the believer knows it was not wasted.
Nothing is wasted.
Three Questions to Close With
- If I genuinely internalised this hadith — if I truly believed that every headache, every sleepless night, every moment of worry or sadness or physical pain was working on my account — how would that change my relationship with the ordinary discomforts of my daily life?
- The hadith covers both the suffering of the body (nasab, wasab) and the suffering of the mind and heart (hamm, huzn, ghamm). Which of these is most present in my life right now — and does knowing it is being received change anything about how I am carrying it?
- The thorn is the minimum — the smallest possible unit of suffering that the hadith addresses. Is there something in my life so minor that I have never thought to connect it to Allah’s mercy — and what would it mean to begin seeing even that through the lens of this hadith?