The Quranic account of Ayyub, Job, shared across the Abrahamic traditions though narrated with its own emphases, is the figure Islamic exegesis returns to most often as sabr's embodiment: afflicted with prolonged illness and loss, he is described as calling upon God not with complaint against the affliction itself but simply noting that harm has touched him and that God is the most merciful of the merciful, a restrained address the exegetical tradition reads as the model of patience under trial precisely because it withholds accusation while still honestly naming the difficulty, rather than requiring a suffering believer to pretend the hardship does not hurt.
Ghazali situates sabr as ghadab's direct opposite in his treatment of the vices, arguing that the two draw on the same underlying capacity, the strength to restrain an immediate impulsive reaction, applied in one case to anger and in the other to hardship or temptation generally, so that cultivating sabr in one domain is understood to strengthen it in the others. Later Sufi literature extends sabr further into a technical stage on the spiritual path, ranked among the maqamat, stations, a traveller must pass through, distinguishing this cultivated, disciplined patience from mere passive endurance imposed by circumstance rather than chosen.