Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya spoke of Shaykh ‘Osman Harbabadi (may God sanctify his innermost consciousness). He said the Shaykh was a friend of God and a commentator of the Qur’an who lived in Ghaznin and earned his livelihood by selling a kind of vegetable preparation, cooked in a pot, of beet-root and turnip.

He then gave a description of the state that Shaykh ‘Osman was passing through. If a buyer approached him, whatever he had in his pot he gave to him, and accepted the coin from him even though it could be a counterfeit one, and did not say anything about it.

When the people came to know that he did not differentiate between genuine and counterfeit coins, he started getting more counterfeit coins. But he did not cease to sell the preparation.

When his last days approached he looked towards the heavens and said: “O God, You know it very well that people used to give me counterfeit coins, but I accepted them as genuine ones. I never turned down anyone’s demand for the preparation I used to sell. Similarly, if my devotion to You has been ‘counterfeit’ in character, be kind and merciful to me and do not reject and return it to me as something unworthy of Your good grace.”