“The neighbour before the house.”

A classical Arabic proverb, usually paired as “the neighbour before the house, the companion before the road.” Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih files it under bad neighbours in al-‘Iqd al-Farid, Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr gives it among the sayings of ‘Ali, and Abu Hilal al-‘Askari cites it as a saying “in the tradition.” It has unusual weight in Islam because of how far the Sunnah takes the neighbour’s right: the Prophet (peace be upon him) said Jibril kept urging him about the neighbour until he thought neighbours would be made heirs.