I heard Saad and a group of the companions of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ saying that there were two brothers during the time of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and one of them was better than the other. The one who was the better of the two died, then the other lived on for forty nights after him before he too passed away.The superior standing of the first over the second was mentioned to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and he asked, "Did he not pray?"They replied, "Yes, Messenger of Allah, and he was a decent man."He said, "What makes you certain how far his prayer carried him?"Then he added, "The likeness of the prayers is that of a deep, fresh-flowing river at a man's door, into which he plunges five times every day. What do you think that leaves of his filth?"
حدثنا هارون بن معروف قال عبد الله وسمعته أنا من هارون حدثنا عبد الله بن وهب حدثني مخرمة عن أبيه
سمعت سعدا وناسا من أصحاب رسول الله ﷺ يقولون كان رجلان أخوان في عهد رسول الله ﷺ وكان أحدهما أفضل من الآخر فتوفي الذي هو أفضلهما ثم عمر الآخر بعده أربعين ليلة ثم توفي فذكر لرسول الله ﷺ فضل الأول على الآخر فقال ألم يكن يصلي فقالوا بلى يا رسول الله فكان لا بأس به فقال ما يدريكم ماذا بلغت به صلاته ثم قال عند ذلك إنما مثل الصلوات كمثل نهر جار بباب رجل غمر عذب يقتحم فيه كل يوم خمس مرات فما ترون يبقي ذلك من درنه
Its chain of transmission is sahih. Harun bin Maruf Marwazi is trustworthy and firmly reliable, one of the teachers of Ahmad and his son Abdullah. Makhrama is the son of Bukayr bin Abdullah bin Ashaj. Al-ghamr, with a fatha on the ghayn and a sakin on the mim, means abundant, that is, it overwhelms and covers whoever enters it. Al-daran means dirt.This hadith was narrated by Malik in Muwatta 1:187-188 as a balagh from Amir bin Saad, from his father. In Suyuti's commentary, Ibn Abdul-Barr said, the story of the two brothers is not preserved from the hadith of Saad bin Abu Waqqas except in this mursal narration of Malik. Bazzar rejected it and stated definitively that it does not exist at all from the hadith of Saad. But he had no right to reject it, because the roots of Malik's mursal narrations are all sound, and it is possible that this hadith was narrated by Saad as well as by others.Ibn Wahb narrated it from Makhrama bin Bukayr, from his father, from Amir bin Saad, from his father, exactly like Malik's hadith. I think Malik took it from the books of Bukayr bin Ashaj, or that Makhrama, his son, reported it to him from him. Ibn Wahb was alone in narrating it, and no one else narrated it, according to what a group of hadith scholars have said.The story of the two brothers is preserved from the hadith of Talha bin Ubaydullah, Abu Hurairah, and Ubayd bin Khalid. The narration of Talha bin Ubaydullah has already appeared in his musnad, numbers 1389, 1401, 1403.