٢٥٣ - باب كرامات الأولياء وفضلهم

On the authority of Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, son of Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq (may Allah be pleased with them both): the People of the Ṣuffah were poor folk, and the Prophet ﷺ once said, ‘Whoever has food enough for two, let him take a third; and whoever has food enough for four, let him take a fifth or a sixth’ — or as he said. Abū Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) brought three men home, while the Prophet ﷺ went off with ten. Abū Bakr took his supper with the Prophet ﷺ, then stayed on until he had prayed the night prayer, then went back, and returned after as much of the night had passed as Allah willed. His wife said to him, ‘What kept you from your guests?’ He said, ‘Have you not given them their supper?’ She said, ‘They refused until you came, though [the food] was offered to them.’ He said: So I went off and hid myself, and he called out, ‘You blockhead!’ and he reviled and cursed, and said, ‘Eat — and no good cheer to you!’ Then he said, ‘By Allah, I will never eat it.’ [ʿAbd al-Raḥmān] said: And by Allah, we would not take a single morsel but that more would grow up beneath it, until they were full, and it became more than it had been before. Abū Bakr looked at it and said to his wife, ‘O sister of Banū Firās, what is this?’ She said, ‘By the delight of my eye, it is now three times more than it was before!’ So Abū Bakr ate of it and said, ‘That [oath] was only from Satan’ — meaning his oath. Then he ate a morsel of it and carried it to the Prophet ﷺ, and it remained with him. There was a treaty between us and a people; the term expired, and we split into twelve men, with each man a band of people — Allah knows how many were with each man — and they all ate from it. In one narration: Abū Bakr swore he would not eat it, the woman swore she would not eat it, and the guest — or the guests — swore that he would not eat it, or that they would not eat until he ate. Abū Bakr said, ‘This is from Satan!’ so he called for the food and ate, and they ate; and they did not lift a morsel but that more grew up beneath it than itself. He said, ‘O sister of Banū Firās, what is this?’ She said, ‘By the delight of my eye, it is now surely more than it was before we ate!’ So they ate, and he sent it to the Prophet ﷺ, and it was mentioned that he ate from it. In another narration: Abū Bakr said to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ‘Take charge of your guests, for I am setting off to the Prophet ﷺ; so finish entertaining them before I come.’ ʿAbd al-Raḥmān set off and brought them what he had, and said, ‘Eat.’ They said, ‘Where is the master of our house?’ He said, ‘Eat.’ They said, ‘We will not eat until the master of our house comes.’ He said, ‘Accept your meal from us, for if he comes and you have not eaten, we shall surely face [trouble] from him.’ But they refused, and I knew that he would be angry with me. So when he came, I withdrew from him, and he said, ‘What have you done?’ They told him, and he said, ‘O ʿAbd al-Raḥmān!’ but I kept silent. Then he said, ‘O ʿAbd al-Raḥmān!’ but I kept silent. Then he said, ‘You blockhead! I adjure you, if you can hear my voice, to come!’ So I came out and said, ‘Ask your guests.’ They said, ‘He has told the truth; he brought it to us.’ He said, ‘You were only waiting for me. By Allah, I will not eat it tonight.’ The others said, ‘By Allah, we will not eat it until you eat.’ He said, ‘Woe to you! What is the matter with you that you do not accept your meal from us? Bring your food!’ So he brought it, and he placed his hand [on it] and said, ‘In the name of Allah — the first [oath] was from Satan,’ and he ate, and they ate. Agreed upon (by al-Bukhārī and Muslim). His words ‘ghunthar’: with a dotted ghayn carrying a ḍammah, then a vowelless nūn, then a three-dotted thāʾ; it means the dull-witted, ignorant person. His words ‘fa-jaddaʿa’ mean he reviled him, and al-jadʿ is cutting off. His words ‘yajidu ʿalayya’ — it is with a kasrah on the jīm, meaning he becomes angry.

On the authority of Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘Among the nations before you there were people who were divinely inspired [muḥaddathūn]; and if there be any such in my nation, then it is ʿUmar.’ Narrated by al-Bukhārī. Muslim also narrated it through the narration of ʿĀʾishah. In both their narrations, Ibn Wahb said: ‘muḥaddathūn’ means those who are divinely inspired.

On the authority of Jābir ibn Samurah (may Allah be pleased with them both), who said: The people of Kūfah complained of Saʿd — meaning Ibn Abī Waqqāṣ (may Allah be pleased with him) — to ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him), so he dismissed him and appointed ʿAmmār over them. They complained until they alleged that he did not even pray properly. So [ʿUmar] sent for him and said, ‘O Abū Isḥāq, these people claim that you do not pray properly.’ He said, ‘As for me — by Allah — I used to pray with them the prayer of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, not falling short of it. I would pray the night prayer, prolonging the first two [rakʿahs] and shortening the last two.’ [ʿUmar] said, ‘That is what is thought of you, O Abū Isḥāq,’ and he sent a man — or men — with him to Kūfah to ask the people of Kūfah about him. He left no mosque without asking about him, and they spoke well of him, until he entered a mosque of Banū ʿAbs, and a man among them — called Usāmah ibn Qatādah, with the kunyah Abū Saʿdah — stood up and said, ‘Now that you have adjured us: Saʿd would not march out with the expedition, nor divide [the spoils] equally, nor judge justly in a case.’ Saʿd said, ‘Now, by Allah, I shall make three supplications: O Allah, if this servant of Yours is a liar, who stood up out of showing-off and seeking reputation, then prolong his life, prolong his poverty, and expose him to trials.’ Afterwards, when he was asked, he would say, ‘An old man, advanced in years, afflicted — the supplication of Saʿd has struck me.’ ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿUmayr, the narrator from Jābir ibn Samurah, said: So I saw him afterwards, his eyebrows having fallen over his eyes from old age, and he would accost the young girls in the streets and pinch them. Agreed upon (by al-Bukhārī and Muslim).

On the authority of ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr: Saʿīd ibn Zayd ibn ʿAmr ibn Nufayl (may Allah be pleased with him) was taken to court by Arwā bint Aws before Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, and she claimed that he had taken something of her land. Saʿīd said, ‘Would I take anything of her land after what I heard from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ?’ He [Marwān] said, ‘What did you hear from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ?’ He said, ‘I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say: “Whoever takes a handspan of land wrongfully, it shall be hung around his neck down to the seventh earth.”’ Marwān said to him, ‘I ask you for no proof after this.’ Then Saʿīd said, ‘O Allah, if she is a liar, then blind her sight and kill her in her own land.’ He said: And she did not die until her sight had gone, and while she was walking in her land she suddenly fell into a pit and died. Agreed upon (by al-Bukhārī and Muslim). In a narration of Muslim from Muḥammad ibn Zayd ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, to the same meaning, [it is added] that he saw her blind, feeling along the walls and saying, ‘The supplication of Saʿīd has struck me,’ and that she passed by a well in the dwelling over which she had disputed with him, and fell into it, and it became her grave.

On the authority of Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh (may Allah be pleased with them both), who said: When [the battle of] Uḥud drew near, my father called me in the night and said, ‘I do not see myself but as one to be slain among the first of the Prophet’s ﷺ companions to be killed. I will leave behind me no one dearer to me than you, save the person of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. I owe a debt, so discharge it, and treat your sisters kindly.’ We rose in the morning, and he was the first to be slain. I buried another man with him in his grave, then my soul was not at ease that I should leave him with another, so I took him out after six months — and behold, he was as he had been on the day I laid him [there], except for his ear. So I placed him in a grave on his own. Narrated by al-Bukhārī.

On the authority of Anas (may Allah be pleased with him): two of the Prophet’s ﷺ companions left his presence on a dark night, and with them was the like of two lamps before them. When they parted, each of them had one [lamp] with him until he reached his family. Narrated by al-Bukhārī through [several] routes; in some of them it is stated that the two men were Usayd ibn Ḥuḍayr and ʿAbbād ibn Bishr (may Allah be pleased with them both).

On the authority of Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent out ten men as a scouting party, and appointed over them ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit al-Anṣārī (may Allah be pleased with him). They set off until, when they were at al-Hadʾah, between ʿUsfān and Mecca, they were reported to a clan of Hudhayl called Banū Liḥyān, who set out after them with close to a hundred archers and followed their tracks. When ʿĀṣim and his companions sensed them, they took refuge in a [high] place, and the people surrounded them and said, ‘Come down and give yourselves up, and you have our pledge and covenant that we will not kill any of you.’ ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit said, ‘O people, as for me, I will not come down under the protection of a disbeliever. O Allah, inform Your Prophet ﷺ about us.’ So they shot at them with arrows and killed ʿĀṣim, and three men came down to them on the [strength of the] pledge and covenant — among them Khubayb, Zayd ibn al-Dathinah, and another man. When [the captors] got hold of them, they loosed the strings of their bows and tied them with them. The third man said, ‘This is the first treachery. By Allah, I will not accompany you; I have in these [slain] an example to follow’ — meaning the slain. So they dragged him and struggled with him, but he refused to go with them, so they killed him. They went off with Khubayb and Zayd ibn al-Dathinah until they sold them both in Mecca, after the battle of Badr. The sons of al-Ḥārith ibn ʿĀmir ibn Nawfal ibn ʿAbd Manāf bought Khubayb, for it was Khubayb who had killed al-Ḥārith on the day of Badr. Khubayb remained their captive until they resolved to kill him. He borrowed a razor from one of the daughters of al-Ḥārith to groom himself, and she lent it to him. A little boy of hers crept up to him while she was unaware, until he reached him, and she found [Khubayb] having seated the child on his thigh, with the razor in his hand. She was alarmed with an alarm that Khubayb noticed, and he said, ‘Do you fear that I would kill him? I would never do such a thing.’ She said, ‘By Allah, I never saw a better captive than Khubayb. By Allah, I once found him eating a bunch of grapes in his hand while he was shackled in iron, and there was no fruit [in season] in Mecca.’ She used to say, ‘It was surely a provision that Allah bestowed upon Khubayb.’ When they took him out of the Sacred Precinct to kill him in the unconsecrated land, Khubayb said to them, ‘Let me pray two rakʿahs,’ so they left him, and he prayed two rakʿahs and then said, ‘By Allah, were it not that you would think what I have is fear [of death], I would have prayed longer. O Allah, count them in number, kill them one by one, and leave not one of them.’ And he recited: ‘I do not care, when I am slain a Muslim, on which side my falling shall be, for Allah’s sake; that is for the sake of God, and if He wills, He will bless the joints of a body torn to pieces.’ It was Khubayb who instituted the [two-rakʿah] prayer for every Muslim killed in captivity. The Prophet ﷺ informed his companions of their news on the day they were stricken. Some people of Quraysh, when they were told that ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit had been killed, sent [men] to bring back something of him by which he could be recognised, for he had killed one of their chiefs. But Allah sent over ʿĀṣim the like of a cloud of hornets, which protected him from their messengers, and they could not cut anything from him. Narrated by al-Bukhārī. His words ‘al-Hadʾah’: it is a place; ‘al-ẓullah’: the cloud; ‘al-dabr’: bees. And his words ‘kill them bidadan’: [the bāʾ may be read] with a kasrah or a fatḥah. Whoever reads it with a kasrah says it is the plural of biddah, with a kasrah on the bāʾ, meaning a share, so its sense is: kill them in divided portions, each one of them having a share. Whoever reads it with a fatḥah says its meaning is: scattered in the killing, one after another, from [the root meaning] dispersal. In this chapter there are many sound narrations that have preceded in their places in this book — among them the hadith of the boy who used to go to the monk and the sorcerer, the hadith of Jurayj, the hadith of the people of the cave over whom the rock closed, and the hadith of the man who heard a voice in the cloud saying, ‘Water the garden of so-and-so,’ and others besides. The proofs in this chapter are many and well-known, and with Allah is success.

On the authority of Ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them both), who said: Never did I hear ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him) say of anything, ‘I think it is such-and-such,’ but that it was as he thought. Narrated by al-Bukhārī.