“Be content with whatever life God has granted you, and give thanks to Him. You should always seek out the reason why you were given sorrow or joy and why these were taken from you again, why something was granted you without your asking and why it was not granted when you wished for it. Once you grasp the meaning of all this, you will suffer less and will be able to endure”;

“If you limit yourself to modest food, you will spare yourself all these consequences. A person should set a regimen for eating and drinking and not break it; for example, eating once a day. If he cannot manage once, then let him eat three times (in the morning, at midday and in the evening), but in such a way that a third of his stomach remains empty; and this food must be earned by honest labour. And twice a week let him indulge his flesh with meat and butter.

If a person leads such a way of life, two hundred dirhams a year will be quite enough for him, and the passions of the flesh will not rage within him. He will always feel alert and healthy, neither plague nor cholera will frighten him, and he will die a natural death, which comes, according to the sage, after a thousand years, and in the belief of the common people, after a hundred and twenty”;

“Your father, having seen that the thirst to acquire earthly goods has no limit and grows every time, was compelled to renounce this vain dream and began to content himself with what was necessary, seeking neither elevation nor downfall, so as to be free of the burden.

If you think this over carefully, you will avoid miserliness, greed and avarice and will be satisfied with little. And if you think about sudden death, you will become attached in your heart to this world, you will not rely too much on the life given you as if on loan, you will live in peace and friendship with people, be merciful to them and wrong no one”.

(From Ahmad Donish’s book Rare Events. Ahmad Donish (1827–1897) was a Central Asian scholar, writer, enlightener, philosopher, thinker, poet, statesman and ambassador of the Bukhara Emirate to the Russian Empire. Ahmad Donish was the founding figure of the modern enlightenment movement throughout Central Asia.)