““Abu Sa‘id, I complain to you of a hard heart.” He said: “Melt it with remembrance.””

A man said this to al-Hasan al-Basri, whose kunya was Abu Sa‘id. Hammad ibn Zayd transmitted the exchange, and Ibn al-Qayyim cites it in al-Wabil as-Sayyib under the benefit that there is a hardness in the heart only remembrance of Allah dissolves. His own gloss explains the verb: the more heedlessness settles on a heart the harder it becomes, and when Allah is remembered that hardness melts “as lead melts in fire.”