She answered, “And why should anything stop me, when the head of John son of Zechariah was once presented as a gift to a prostitute from among the daughters of Israel?” (1)

Ayyūb narrated, from Ibn Abī Mulaykah, who said:

I visited Asmāʾ after Ibn al-Zubayr had been killed, and she said, “I have been told that this man has crucified ʿAbd Allāh. O Allah, do not let me die until he is brought to me so that I may embalm him and wrap him in a shroud.”

Later his body was brought, and she began to embalm him with her own hands and to shroud him, even though she had already lost her sight.

In another chain—also from Ibn Abī Mulaykah—it is said: she performed the funeral prayer over him, and no Friday passed before she herself died.

Sharīk narrated, from al-Rukayn ibn al-Rabīʿ, who said:

I entered upon Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr when she was very old; she was praying while a woman kept saying to her, “Stand up, sit down, do this,” on account of her extreme old age (2).

Ibn Saʿd said: She died only a few nights after her son, and he had been killed on the seventeenth of Jumādā al-Ūlā in the year 73 AH (3).