Explanation of the hadith of Fadalah ibn 'Ubayd (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to the people of the Suffah

The Shaykh : The hadith that follows is also authentic, and it is his saying: And from Fadalah ibn 'Ubayd (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) used to pray with the people, and men from among them would collapse in the prayer due to extreme poverty, and they were the people of the Suffah; until the Bedouins would say: These are madmen - or madmen (plural) -; and when the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) finished the prayer, he would turn to them and say: . Al-Tirmidhi narrated it and said: It is an authentic hadith, and Ibn Hibban in his "Sahih". Al-Khasasah - with a fathah on the khah and two sads with no hamzah - means destitution and hunger.
Fadalah ibn 'Ubayd says that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) used to pray with the people, and men from among them would collapse in the prayer due to extreme poverty, from hunger; their nerves would relax and they would not be able to control themselves, so they would fall to the ground against their will, and they were the people of the Suffah. When some of the Bedouins who did not know the condition of these Companions and the severity of their poverty saw them, they said: These are madmen - or madmen (plural). The meaning is the same, but the narrator is uncertain whether Fadalah said "madmen" or "madmen (plural)"? It is an anomalous plural as the linguists say. When the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) finished the prayer, he would turn to them to console them and comfort them, and even to encourage them to be patient, and he would say to them (peace and blessings be upon him): .
Does this hadith encourage the Muslim to intentionally seek poverty for the sake of poverty, or what is the case?
Some people may think that is the case, but it is not. Rather, in this hadith there is consolation for one who may be afflicted with some destitution and need and does not find there what satisfies his want and his meal; so at that time he finds these hadiths are the medicine and cure for him, and they are what at that time turn him away from being a burden on others or a dependent on people. This is what we understand from these hadiths, otherwise poverty itself is often a calamity for its owner; because he needs a lot of patience and satisfaction with the divine decree and destiny, and this is what many people cannot do...
And for that reason, it was among the things from which the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) sought refuge was poverty; so he would say: , and the reason is what we mentioned, that many people do not have patience with the harshness of life. As for a person intentionally seeking to be poor, that is not of Islam in any way whatsoever; because poverty only comes to a person when he is occupied with something for which his companion is praised religiously, as we mentioned earlier in describing Abu Hurayrah in his state of hunger and poverty. As for living like that in his opinion, relying on Allah, while in reality he is lazy and dependent on people and their pockets and their charities; this is not what Islam encourages. Rather, it has come in the Qur'an, the saying of Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He): , meaning, provision yourselves with material provisions when you leave your lands, intending the Sacred House for Hajj or 'Umrah, so provision yourselves and do not rely on the provisions of the companions you are traveling with; and for that reason he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: , and the upper hand is the giver and the lower hand is the taker.
So the rich person who fulfills the obligatory is more beloved to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) if he is matched with the patient poor person, but it is not said: the grateful rich person is better than the patient poor person; because the comparison between one person and another is not made by one aspect, which is wealth for the rich and poverty for the poor, but rather by what is gathered in each of the two persons of good deeds and acts of obedience and worship; so whoever has more worship is better with Allah. But if poverty is matched with wealth and each of them is standing within the limits of the Shari'ah; the apparent is that wealth has a wider circle of good in it than the satisfaction of the poor person and his patience with his poverty.
And from here is narrated a story that may be authentic or may not be, and in it is a lesson; they say that a man from those ascetics famous for Sufism went out traveling in the wilderness as is their custom; knowing that such traveling is not prescribed, and the matter is as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ; going out like this in the deserts, a person lives with the beasts and leaves his fellow humans and does not deal with them; so the least that can be said is that he contradicted the well-known hadith of the Messenger (peace be upon him) from the hadith of Ibn 'Umar: , so this traveling that is mentioned regarding the Sufis is non-Shari'ah traveling. They claimed that one of them went out as is their custom, and he kept walking and walking until he was hungry and tired, so he took refuge in a ruin, and behold, he looked out from it to another ruin, and he saw a lion coming carrying in its jaws a prey that it was presenting to a dog crouching there lying down, so this man said: Glory be to Allah! Glory be to the Provider! How did He subdue this lion for this dog?! He said: So he heard a caller saying to him: Be a lion and do not be a dog.
And the moral of this story is very clear from dozens of hadiths, and I have heard some of them: , .