In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Most Merciful.
Chapter Eighty-Nine: Knowing Supererogatory Works without Restriction
Supererogatory works are those whose very selves
have a root witnessed among all prescribed duties.
Prescribed duty is like bodies when you meet them
with light, and the added work is like their shade.
It appears in their image, though no prescribed duty,
then returns in the reckoning as duty like them.
The report has brought this, making their excellence plain
in revealed law, distinguishing their root from their root.
When you perform them, know that
God has stored for you the fruit of their doing:
your Lord becomes your very faculties, so draw
from their light rain until you attain their downpour.
(Supererogatory Works and Their Roots)
Know—may God strengthen you with the Holy Spirit—that supererogatory works have a comprehensive ruling in the divine presence, in which their possessor takes
Notes
Translator’s note TN3971-1: Nafl denotes an addition beyond a prescribed root. The poem’s repeated “their root from their root” is retained as supplied. Ṭall and wābil are light rain or dew and a heavy downpour, used here for degrees of the works’ fruit.
