and he also cited the hadith about the Ten who were given the glad tidings of Paradise, as narrated by Saʿīd ibn Zayd (1).
Ḥajjāj al-Ṣawwāf related: I was told by Iyās ibn Muʿāwiyah, from his father, who said:
When the day of al-Qādisiyyah arrived, al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah went with ten men to the Persian commander and said,
“We are a people of Magians, and we dislike killing you because you would defile our land.”
He went on:
“We used to worship stones until Allah sent us a Messenger, so we followed him. We have not come for food; rather, we have been commanded to fight our enemy. We are here to kill your warriors and to take your children captive. As for the food you mentioned, we do not find enough to satisfy ourselves. So we came and found in your land an abundance of food and water, and we shall not leave until it becomes ours as well as yours.”
The foreigner replied, “He has spoken the truth.”
[Mughīrah] added, “And tomorrow your eye will be put out.” The next day his eye was indeed pierced by an arrow.
ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿUmayr said: I saw Ziyād standing at al-Mughīrah’s grave reciting:
Beneath these stones lie prudence and resolve,
a most stubborn foe with a cutting tongue. (2)
A mottled viper coiled within its den—
no healer’s spell can shield even the whole from its strike. (3)
A group of scholars said: The governor of Kūfah, al-Mughīrah, died in Shaʿbān of the year 50 AH, at the age of seventy.
In the two Ṣaḥīḥs there are twelve hadiths transmitted from him. Al-Bukhārī alone records one, and Muslim alone records two (4).