Al-Asmaʿī related: Salamah ibn Bilāl (1) narrated to us, on the authority of Abū Rajāʾ, who said:

“Saʿd ibn ʿUbādah was killed in Syria; the jinn struck him down in Ḥawrān.”

Al-Wāqidī said: “Yahya ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, a descendant of Saʿd, narrated to us from his father, who said: ‘Saʿd died in Ḥawrān two and a half years into ʿUmar’s caliphate. News of his death never reached Medina until some boys heard a voice calling from a well reciting:

We have slain the chief of the Khazraj—
Saʿd ibn ʿUbādah;
We shot him with two arrows
and did not miss his heart.

The boys were terrified, so they recorded the date, and it turned out to be the very day on which he had died.’ (2)

He had merely sat down to relieve himself in a culvert and died on the spot; when they found him, his skin had turned green.

Yahya ibn Bukayr, Ibn ʿĀʾisha, and others said: He died in Ḥawrān in the year 16 AH.

Al-Madāʾinī transmitted, from Yahya ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, from his father, that he died during the caliphate of Abū Bakr.

Ibn Saʿd said: Saʿd could write in the pre-Islamic period, and he excelled at swimming and archery,