The Shaykh’s explanation of the athar of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: “I have seen us, and we had no clothes except tattered woolen garments, and days would come upon one of us when he would find no food to sustain his back…”

The Shaykh : Our previous lesson in the authentic hadiths from the book al-Targhib wa al-Tarhib reached the sixtieth or sixty-first hadith, which is an authentic hadith. He said, may Allah have mercy on him: “And from Abdullah ibn Shuqayq, who said: I stayed with Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) in Madinah for a year. One day, while we were at the chamber of Aishah, he said to me: ‘I have seen us, and we had no clothes except tattered woolen garments. And days would come upon one of us when he would find no food to sustain his back, until one of us would take a stone and tie it to his stomach, then tie it with his garment to sustain his back.’” It was narrated by Ahmad, and its narrators are the narrators of the authentic collections.
There is nothing new in this hadith regarding the previous hadiths; rather, it confirms what was mentioned in some of the preceding hadiths, particularly from Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), about their severe hardship in living, to the extent that one of them would not find what was necessary to sustain his back, let alone side dishes or other luxuries.