and they continued transmitting hadith from the time ʿUthmān was killed until the last of them died (1).
ʿUbādah ibn al-Walīd relates that al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah once said, “Take us to Salamah ibn al-Akwaʿ so that we may question him, for he is among the righteous, early Companions of the Prophet ﷺ.”
So we set out to see him and met him while his attendant was leading him, for he had lost his sight (2).
Yazīd ibn Abī ʿUbayd reports: “When ʿUthmān was killed, Salamah went out to al-Rabadhah, married a woman there, and she bore him children. A few nights before his death he returned to Medina (3).”
Al-Wāqidī and a group of scholars said that he died in 74 AH.
I (the author) say: He had reached his nineties, and his narrations appear among the short (high) chains in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī.
51 – ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās, “the Ocean,” Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Hāshimī* (ʿ)
The Scholar of the Ummah, the Jurist of his age, and the foremost exegete—Abū al-ʿAbbās ʿAbd Allāh, son of
(1) Cited in Tabaqat Ibn Saad, 2/372; the transmitter Muhammad ibn Umar—better known as al-Waqidi—is considered weak.
(2) Tarikh Ibn Asakir, 7/250 b; the additional wording is taken from his version.
(3) Related by al-Bukhari, 13/35 (Book of Tribulations) and by Ibn Asakir, 7/250 b.
Al-Rabadha is a village belonging to Madinah, about three miles away, close to Dhat Irq on the Hijaz road when one departs from Fayd heading for Mecca.
Ibn Hajar remarks in Fath al-Bari that this report allows one to calculate the length of Salama’s life in the desert—approximately forty years—because the assassination of Uthman occurred in Dhu al-Hijjah of year 35 AH, while Salama died, according to the sound view, in year 74 AH.
(*) Principal sources: Ibn Saad, Tabaqat, 2/365; Nasab Quraysh, p. 26; Khalifah, Tabaqat, nos. 821, 1485, 2605; al-Zuhd, p. 188; Ibn Habib, al-Muhabbar, pp. 16, 24, 92, 289, 292, 378; al-Bukhari, al-Tarikh al-Kabir, 5/3, and al-Tarikh al-Saghir, 1/126, 127, 137; al-Baladhuri, Ansab al-Ashraf, 3/27, 55; al-Yaqubi, Maʿrifa wa’l-Tarikh, 1/241, 270, 493; Ibn Abi Hatim, al-Jarh wa’l-Taʿdil, 5/116; al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak, 3/533; Abu Nuaym, Hilyat al-Awliya, 1/314; Ibn Hazm, Jamharat Ansab al-Arab, 19–20 (see also the general index); Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istiaʿab, no. 933; al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad, 1/173; al-Kalabadhi, Jamʿ Bayna Rijal al-Sahihayn, 1/239; Ibn Asakir, Tarikh Dimashq, 9/238 b; Ibn al-Athir, Jamiʿ al-Usul, 9/63; Ibn al-Athir, Usd al-Ghabah, 3/290; Ibn al-Saqti, al-Hulla al-Sira’, 1/20; al-Nawawi, Tahdhib al-Asmaʾ wa’l-Lughat, 1/1/274.