Mishkat al-Masabih — Hadith #49150

On the authority of Salman, he said: The Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, addressed us on the last day of Sha`ban and said: “O people, a great month has overshadowed you.” Blessed is a month in which a night is better than a thousand months. God Almighty has made its fasting obligatory and its night prayers voluntary. Whoever draws near in it with a characteristic of Goodness is like one who performed an obligatory prayer in any other place, and whoever performed an obligatory prayer in it is like one who performed seventy obligatory prayers in any other place, and it is the month of patience and perseverance. His reward is Paradise, a month of consolation, and a month in which the believer’s livelihood is increased. Whoever breaks the fast in it for a fasting person will have forgiveness of his sins and free his neck. From the Fire, and he will have a reward similar to his, without his reward being diminished in the least. We said: O Messenger of God, not all of us can find something with which to break the fast when fasting. Then the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, said: “God will give this reward to whoever breaks the fast for a fasting person with a taste of milk, a date, or a drink of... Water, and whoever satisfies a fasting person, God will give him from my cistern a drink from which he will not be thirsty until he enters Paradise. It is a month whose beginning is mercy and whose middle is forgiveness. Its end will be emancipation from the Fire, and whoever eases the burden of what he possesses therein, God will forgive him and free him from the Fire.” Narrated by Al-Bayhaqi