“Being grateful for a blessing is seeing yourself in it as an uninvited guest.”

Hamdun al-Qassar (d. 271 AH / 884 CE) was a teacher of Nishapur known for his severity with his own self. The word he uses, tufayli, is someone who turns up at a feast uninvited, eats, and knows the whole time that none of it was set out for him. Ibn al-Qayyim, who collects the definition in Madarij as-Salikin, says it means the same as al-Junayd’s: gratitude is not seeing yourself as worthy of the blessing.