the water that al-ʿAbbās passed to them. He was then shrouded in three white Yemeni sheets. Once he had been washed and shrouded, people entered to pray over him during those three days, group after group: each band would come in, perform the funeral prayer and offer salutations, then depart. They did not form ranks, nor did anyone stand before them to lead the prayer, until everyone who wished to pray had finished. Thereafter he was buried. Al-ʿAbbās, ʿAlī, and al-Faḍl lowered him into the grave. At that moment a man from the Anṣār said, “Let us share with you in laying the Messenger of Allah ﷺ to rest, just as we shared with you in his life.” So he descended with them into the grave and helped them with the burial.

This report is also transmitted by Muḥammad ibn Shuʿayb ibn Shābūr from al-Nuʿmān.

ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad al-Akhnasī said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ passed away on Monday when the sun had begun to decline, and he was buried on Wednesday.”

ʿUrwah likewise stated that he died on a Monday and was buried toward the end of the night preceding Wednesday.

Al-Ḥasan said: “His death occurred in the month of Aylūl (September).”

I say: Given that each cycle of thirty-three lunar years amounts, within six hundred and sixty years, to twenty cycles, then up to the year 703 AH from his death twenty-one cycles have elapsed. Accordingly, in that Rabīʿ al-Awwal the month of Tishrīn al-Awwal (October) and part of Aylūl (September) corresponded to Ṣafar; Āb (August) coincided with Muḥarram; and most of Tammūz (July) fell in Dhū al-Ḥijjah—so the Farewell Pilgrimage occurred in Tammūz.

Abū al-Yaman Ibn ʿAsākir and others said: “The only possible Monday in Rabīʿ al-Awwal on which he could have died is the second of the month, or thereabouts; it cannot have been the twelfth, because there is unanimous agreement that the Day of ʿArafah during the Farewell Pilgrimage was on a Friday. This means that the first of Muḥarram must certainly have been a Friday or a Saturday, and on that basis the first of Ṣafar would have fallen on a Saturday, Sunday, or Monday—making the first of Rabīʿ al-Awwal a Sunday. That, however, is improbable, for it is rare for three consecutive months to be deficient. The stronger conclusion is that the month began on a Monday, and it is therefore possible that…"