today.

He then passed the codex to one of the young men with him. The youth read faster than the quickest reciter; but when he reached a certain passage he glanced at his companions, as a man signaling something to a friend, then clasped his hands and said, “Yah!”

So he tossed it aside.

Kaʿb exclaimed, “Ah!”

He picked it up, set it in his lap and resumed reading. When he came to a verse from it they all fell down in prostration, while the old man remained weeping.

Someone asked him, “What makes you weep?”

He replied, “And why should I not weep? A man has spent such-and-such years laboring in misguidance, and I did not even recognize Islam until today.”

Hammām said: Qatādah narrated to us, from Zurārah, from Mutarrif ibn Mālik (1), who said:

“We discovered the body of Daniel in Sūs, lying in a niche of bronze. Whenever the people of Sūs suffered drought they would bring him out and seek rain by means of him. Alongside him we found two bundles of linen and sixty sealed jars; we opened one of them and inside were ten thousand [coins]. We also found a small chest containing a book. A Christian hireling who was with us, named Nuʿaym, bought it for two dirhams.

“Qatādah then said: Abū Ḥassān told me that the first to find it was Ḥurqūṣ, so Abū Mūsā gave him the two bundles and two hundred dirhams. Later he asked that the bundles be returned, but Ḥurqūṣ refused, so he tore them up into turbans. Abū Mūsā wrote about the matter to ʿUmar, and ʿUmar wrote back:

‘The Prophet of Allah prayed that none but the Muslims should inherit him. So perform the funeral prayer over him and bury him.’

“Hammām ibn Yaḥyā said: Farqad narrated to us, and Abū Tamīmah narrated, that ʿUmar’s letter also said: ‘Wash him with lote-leaf and water scented with basil.’

“He then returned to Mutarrif ibn Mālik’s account, which continued:

‘It occurred to me to go to Jerusalem. While I was on the road I met a rider whom I took to be that very servant…’”