135 – Muḥammad narrated to us; ʿUbayd ibn Isḥāq al-Ḍabbī narrated to us; ʿĀṣim ibn Muḥammad al-ʿUmarī narrated from Zayd ibn Aslam, from his father, who said:

While ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb was reviewing the people, a man passed by carrying his little son on his shoulder. ʿUmar remarked, “I have never seen one crow resemble another more closely than this child resembles that man.”

The man replied, “By Allah, O Commander of the Believers, his mother gave birth to him after she had already died.”

ʿUmar exclaimed, “Woe to you! How could that be?”

He said, “I went out with such-and-such a military detachment, leaving her pregnant. As I departed I said, ‘I place in Allah’s trust what is in your womb.’ When I returned from the expedition I was told that she had died. One night I was sitting in al-Baqīʿ with a cousin of mine when I noticed a light among the graves, shining like a lamp. I asked my cousin, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘We do not know; we only see that light every night at the grave of So-and-so.’

“So I took a spade and walked toward the grave. I found it split open, and there was the boy in his mother’s lap. Then a voice called out: ‘O you who entrusted your trust to his Lord, take back your deposit! Had you entrusted it to his mother, you would have found her.’ I picked up the child, and the grave closed again.”

Abū Jaʿfar said: I asked ʿUthmān ibn Zafar al-Taymī about this report, and he said, “I have indeed heard it from ʿĀṣim ibn Muḥammad.”