189 – Abū ʿAbd Allāh related to me. Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Taymī and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Nahār also narrated to me, saying: We heard ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Walīd the devotee—an itinerant ascetic who would hasten to any funeral he heard of—recount the following:

“I once witnessed a burial. When they had begun to heap earth over the deceased, an elderly man stepped forward and called out, ‘People, fear Allah! There is already someone in the grave—are you going to bury this man with him?’ The relatives of the dead man and the neighbours with them leapt at the shaykh, trying to silence him, yet he would not desist.

After the burial was complete he said, ‘For Allah’s sake, go back and leave me here.’ ⦗154⦘ So we withdrew, taking a raised causeway called al-ʿAqīq that lay between us and the cemetery, roughly half a farsakh away. When we reached the causeway we kept looking back with the shaykh at a man who stayed beside him for a while. Then the shaykh approached us and asked, ‘Did you see anyone speaking with me?’ We replied, ‘Yes, we saw someone with you.’

He said, ‘That was the one you thought I had imagined. After you left he came out of the grave and said to me, “Good man, you heard what the people said—do you know who I am?” I asked, “Who are you?” He replied, “I am the reward for the last three verses of Sūrat al-Hashr; I am the companion of every believer in his grave. Because that man used to recite me, I entered to him and kept him company in his grave.”’ Then he vanished and I never saw him again.”