through its target.

When Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥudhayfa heard these words he retorted, “By Allah, if you are telling the truth—and, as far as I know, you are a liar—then you are one of them.” ⦗1⦘

Ibn al-Mubārak commented: “The purport of this report is that they gather people around them and address them with such statements.”

Ibn ʿAwn narrated from Ibn Sīrīn that Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥudhayfa ibn ʿUtbah and Kaʿb once boarded a ship together. Muḥammad said, “O Kaʿb, do you not find any mention in the Torah of how our ship is sailing?”
Kaʿb replied, “No, but I do find mention of a man— the most wretched youth of Quraysh—who plunges into turmoil the way a donkey leaps. May you not be that man.”

Ibn Lahīʿah related from Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb: “Ibn Abī Ḥudhayfa set out with Muʿāwiyah, who brought them to Syria and then divided them into two groups: he imprisoned Ibn Abī Ḥudhayfa and some companions in Damascus, and he imprisoned Ibn ʿUdays and others in Baalbek.”

Ibn Yūnus said: “Ibn Abī Ḥudhayfa was killed in Palestine in 36 AH. He was among those Muʿāwiyah expelled from Egypt.”

I (the author) say: Most of those who sought ʿUthmān’s blood were themselves killed, and perhaps their deaths served them well as a means of purification.

104 – Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Ṣiddīq*