Sleep · a Light

Sleep was treated as a departure with instructions

Al-Bara ibn Azib was taught a sequence for going to bed: perform the washing you would perform for prayer, lie down on your right side, then say a short prayer that ends by placing yourself in the care of Allah. The Prophet ﷺ told him that if he died that night he would die in a natural state of belief, and to make those words the last thing he said. The framing is exact. Sleep is treated as a small death, which is also how the Qur'an speaks of it. Nothing in the sequence requires equipment or company. It can be done in a tent, a barracks or a hospital ward, and it puts the last conscious sentence of the day under the sleeper's own control.

Al-Bara ibn Azib · Madinah

Source · Bukhari 247