Abu Sa'id al-Khudrl said that a corpse was brought to the Prophet on a bier for him to pray over it and he asked the people whether their friend owed anything. On being told that he did, he asked whether he had left anything to discharge it, and when they replied that he had not, he told them to pray over him. But ‘Ali b. Abu Talib said, “I shall be responsible for his debt, Messenger of God,” so he went forward and prayed over him. A version has something to the same effect, adding that he said, “May God redeem your pledges from hell as you have redeemed the pledges of your brother Muslim! No Muslim will discharge his brother’s debt without God redeeming his pledges on the day of resurrection.”
Ash-Sharid reported God’s Messenger as saying, ‘‘Delay in payment on the part of one who possesses the means makes it lawful to dishonour and punish him.” Ibn al-Mubarak said that “dishonour” means he may be spoken to roughly and “punish” means he may be imprisoned for it.
‘Abd ar-Rahman b. Ka’b b. Malik said that Mu'adh b. Jabal was a generous young man who could save nothing and was always borrowing, so that he expended all his property on his debts. He went to the Prophet and asked him to speak to his creditors, and if they would have remitted debts to anyone they would have done it to Mu'adh for God’s Messenger’s sake, but God’s Messenger sold them his property with the result that Mu'adh had nothing left.
