The Account of Junaid al-Baghdadi

One who had lately embraced Islam, coming from a Hindu background, took for himself the name Junaid — a beautiful name, and one that recalls one of the greatest scholars this Umma has produced, Junaid al-Baghdadi (may Allah have mercy on him). He was a great shaykh with thousands of students, who served as a judge in the highest court of the Muslims and, alongside this, taught taṣawwuf, helping people purify themselves and teaching them the craft of sincerity, ikhlāṣ, and iḥsān. Through his hands, many shuyūkh and mashāyikh came into being. Some weeks after his death, someone saw him in a dream, seated on a magnificent throne with a crown upon his head, beaming with happiness. Asked, "O Junaid, how did Allah (swt) treat you, how did He judge you?" — surely, as the greatest shaykh of his time, through whom thousands had come to Islam — he answered: none of it, none of it, none of it was accepted by Allah (swt) at all. Asked then how he had been given this honour, he said: those small rakʿahs, those little, baby rakʿahs of prayer that I used to pray in the middle of the night, between myself and Allah (swt) — these are the ones; because of them Allah (swt) gave me this. Everything else — the teaching, the judgeship, the students — Allah rejected; it was those tahajjud prayers, offered in his own private space, between himself and Allah (swt), that had saved him and brought him this standing.

Allah (swt) says of this: whoever rises in the middle of the night, breaks his beautiful sleep for Him, and prays two rakʿahs of ṣalāh, Allah (swt) will grant him such an honour on the Day of Judgment, in shāʾ Allāh.