98 – Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar al-Qurashī narrated to us; from Mālik ibn Ismāʿīl; Ḥuṣayn al-Asadī narrated to us; he said: Marthad ibn Ḥawshab narrated:

I was once sitting with Yūsuf ibn ʿAmr, and beside him was a man whose face seemed split, one half looking like a sheet of iron. Yūsuf said to him, “Tell Marthad what you saw.” The man said:

“I was a young man who had fallen into various immoral acts. When the plague broke out, I thought, ‘Let me go and serve at one of the frontier garrisons.’ Then it occurred to me to dig up graves.

One night, between the sunset and night prayers, I had already opened a grave and was leaning on the soil of another. A funeral arrived, ⦗100⦘ buried a man in that very grave, and levelled the earth over him. Two white birds then came from the west, each the size of a camel. One alighted at the dead man’s head, the other at his feet; they stirred the soil, after which one of them went down into the grave while the other remained on its edge.

I drew closer and sat on the lip of the grave; I was a man whose greed was never satisfied. The one inside struck his hand against his side and I heard him say:

‘Were you not the one who used to visit your in-laws in two dyed garments, dragging them behind you in pride, strutting in arrogant fashion?’

The deceased replied, ‘I am weaker than that now.’

The bird struck him a blow, and the grave filled up until water and grease overflowed. He returned, repeated the same rebuke, and struck him again—three blows in all—each time saying those words while the grave kept brimming with water and fat.

Then he raised his head, looked at me, and said, ‘Look where he is sitting—may Allah overturn him!’ He struck the side of my face, and I lay there stunned for the rest of the night until dawn.

Afterwards I kept staring at the grave as it was and pondering my own part in it.”

Marthad concluded: he narrated something to this effect, or very similar.