188 – Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Taymī related to me, saying: I heard Shurayḥ ibn Maslama and my father recount, on the authority of al-Qāsim ibn Abī Wadiʿa:

“There was a man who came to us every year from Rayy intending the pilgrimage, yet he carried neither provisions nor any of the usual equipment for Hajj. On the road he would sometimes travel with whatever hard-working laborer or needy wayfarer happened to accompany him.

He once told me: ‘We had a wet-nurse who was a Magian (Zoroastrian). She died, and they cast her body into the nawūs —the Magian funerary vault. My daughters kept weeping for her, and their grief weighed heavily on me. One evening, between Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ, after the moon had risen, I went out, burdened with sorrow, and reclined where I could look toward the vault.

As I watched, something dangled down from the nawūs. When it drew near, I saw that it was the nurse herself: her face blackened, her eyes bluish, her hair disheveled, until she stood right over me. She said, “Blessed are you, community of Muḥammad! Every one of you is in Paradise, while the Magians are branded in the Fire with a mark that blackens their faces, blues their eyes, and makes their hair stand on end.”

Then she withdrew and sank back into the nawūs while I was still watching her.

I returned to my household and told them what I had seen, and they stopped weeping for her.’”

Abū ʿAbd Allāh adds: “I myself heard al-Qāsim relate this account, and he is my maternal uncle.”