Suicide bomber Salman Abedi asked a taxi driver to 'pray for me' as he drove him towards Manchester Arena to commit mass murder.
Exchanges between Abedi and Tariq Nadeem on the night of the bombing were revealed on day 48 of the public inquiry into the atrocity on Monday.
Abedi, said Mr Nadeem, also gave him a pocket copy of the Koran as a 'present' as they travelled.
Mr Nadeem, a taxi driver for 10 years, agreed to take Abedi to Shudehill via Granby Row in Manchester at around 7.30pm on May 22, 2017.
Abedi, who had rented a flat inside Granby House on Granby Row, approached his black cab outside Piccadilly railway station, the inquiry heard.
Mr Nadeem, who didn't give evidence at the criminal trial of Hashem Abedi, told the inquiry that Salman Abedi 'looked very weak'.
"My first impression was, is this someone with some mental health difficulties?" he said.
"He spoke in a very low tone, like someone who was ill or weak."
The inquiry heard Abedi went inside Granby House then emerged back to Mr Nadeem's taxi struggling to carry a rucksack which contained the bomb.
"It appeared very heavy," Mr Nadeem said.
"It was strapped on his back and I could tell he was carrying it with great difficulty.
"I said 'it's heavy isn't it? It looks heavy'.
"To which he said, 'I'm weak, aren't I brother?'
"As we were driving along High Street he said to me 'can I give you a gift, brother?' To which I replied 'okay'.
"Then he handed me a copy of a pocket Koran, a small copy that people normally carry on them to read.
"It was a second-hand copy. It was used. He handed me that copy.
"Then we had a conversation. I said 'thank you' and he said 'please pray for me, brother'. These were his words."
Mr Nadeem said Abedi went on to ask him for his name.
He said Abedi told him he was from Libya - and called Suleman.
At 8.15pm Abedi was dropped off near Shudehill bus station, with Mr Nadeem saying Abedi told him he was only going 'local'.
The witness added: "The meter was showing £8.
"He had already given me £5. As a goodwill gesture because he had given me a gift I said 'I am not taking anymore money from you'."
He then drove away.
Earlier, the inquiry heard Hashem Abedi, the bomber's younger brother, worked as a delivery driver at a fast food takeaway from 2016 until around six months before the Arena bombing.
He 'scavenged' around waste bins looking for vegetable oil cans outside and loaded them into his car to take home, a witness said.
The inquiry has been told pieces of metal from an oil can were located in the City Room area of the Arena after the attack.
Abedi would also 'smoke weed' and wasn't 'honest', the witness said.
"He is religious, but I think he got the wrong idea of Islam," he said.
Abedi would take 'metal tins and anything including metal' from the takeaway, the witness said.
He said he told him it was to weigh in for scrap.
"He used to take some from [another food establishment] next door," added the witness, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
"We used to put the oil tins outside the bin.
"At the end of the night, he used to collect them together and put them in his car."
John Cooper QC, for some of the victims' families, suggested Abedi was 'scavenging around the bins for metal'.
The witness agreed.
The inquiry was told Hashem Abedi took ecstasy, MDMA and the painkiller Tramadol, and also asked a colleague in the takeaway to buy acid for him.
The Arena bombing by Salman Abedi after an Ariana Grande concert claimed 22 lives and injured more than 1,000.
His brother was convicted of 22 counts of murder, one count of attempted murder and one count of conspiracy to cause an explosion following a trial in March, and was jailed for a minimum of 55 years in August.
The inquiry is due to run through to spring next year.
