Indeed, the Messenger is the light by which the blindness that shrouded both our forefathers and ourselves was lifted;
His family is a safeguard for our religion—their merit over us is great, and their due right upon us is binding.
Why, then, do you keep them from us and keep us from them, harming them through us and harming us through them?
Never will Allah grant a person who hates them honour in religion or authority on earth. (1)

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (2) says in his biographical entry on Ibn ʿAbbas:
He is the one to whom the lines reliably attributed through several chains are ascribed:
“If Allah should take the light from my eyes,
there yet remains within my tongue and heart a light.
My heart is keen, my reason free of defect,
and in my mouth is a blade as keen as a well-forged sword.”

Sālim ibn Abī Ḥafṣah related from Abū Kulthūm that when Ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah had buried Ibn ʿAbbas he said, “Today the godly scholar (rabbānī) of this community has died.” (3)
Another transmitter gave the chain as “from Mundhir al-Thawrī” in place of Abū Kulthūm. (4)

Ḥusayn ibn Wāqid al-Marwazī said: Abū al-Zubayr narrated to us, “When Ibn ʿAbbas died, a white bird came and slipped inside his shroud.”
Al-Ajlaḥ related the same from Abū al-Zubayr, adding, “People used to think it was the embodiment of his knowledge.” (5)
ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib transmitted a similar report from Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, adding, “That bird was never seen again.”