Ibn ʿUlayyah narrated—from Yūnus, from al-Ḥasan—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Bilāl is the vanguard of the Abyssinians.” (1)
ʿĀʾishah reported: When the Prophet ﷺ first arrived in Madinah, both Abū Bakr and Bilāl came down with fever. Whenever the chills overtook Abū Bakr he would recite:
“Every man greets the dawn among his household,
while death is nearer to him than the strap of his sandal.”
And whenever Bilāl’s fever subsided he would raise his voice and say:
“Oh, that I might spend a single night
in a valley ringed with idhkhir and jalīl!
Will I ever drink again from the waters of Majannah?
Will Shāmah and Tufayl once more appear before my eyes?”
Then he would supplicate: “O Allah, curse ʿUtbah, Shaybah, and Umayyah ibn Khalaf, for they drove us from our homeland to this land of pestilence.” (2)
Al-Ḥasan ibn Ṣāliḥ narrated—from Abū Rabīʿah, from al-Ḥasan, from Anas, who said: “The Messenger …”
(1) Reported by Ibn Saʿd, 3/1/59; the chain is broken. A moment ago the same report was cited through a different isnad.
(2) Recorded by al-Bukhari: no. 1889 (Virtues of Madina, ch. 12), no. 3926 (Merits of the Ansar, ‘The Prophet’s arrival in Madina’), no. 5654 (Book of the Sick, ‘Men visiting women’), and no. 5677 (‘Supplication for the removal of plague and fever’); also by Ahmad 6/260 and Ibn Saʿd 3/1/165, all through the chain Hisham → his father → ʿAʾisha. The full wording is: “O Allah, make Madina as dear to us as Mecca—or dearer; O Allah, bless our saʿ and our mudd, make the city healthy for us, and transfer its fever to al-Juhfa.” ʿAʾisha added: “We reached Madina when it was the most fever-stricken land of God, and Bathan was running nijl, that is, foul-smelling water.”
• waʿk (with ḍamma on the first letter): fever.
• muṣbaḥ (pattern of Muhammad): a person who dies at dawn.
• shirak naʿlih: the thong on the upper part of a sandal.
• yarfaʿ ʿaqīratahu: he raises his voice in song or in weeping.
• Majanna: a locality a few miles from Mecca that hosted a market.
• Shama and Tufayl: two mountains near Mecca; al-Khattabi first thought them mountains, but later confirmed they are springs.
The printed edition misreads the phrase “aqlaʿ ʿanhu” (“it stopped for him”) as “ʿan Majanna.” The verses are also found in Muʿjam al-Buldan 3/315, where the reading is “bifakh” instead of “biwad.”