in the year 12 AH, the very year al-Ashʿath ibn Qays was brought in as a prisoner. I watched him, shackled in irons, speaking with Abū Bakr, while Abū Bakr kept saying to him, “You did this and you did that.”
When the exchange came to an end, I heard al-Ashʿath say, “O Successor of the Messenger of Allah, spare me so that I may fight on your behalf, and marry me to your sister.” Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq pardoned him and married him to his sister Umm Farwah, who later bore him Muḥammad ibn al-Ashʿath.
Juwayriyya ibn Asmāʾ relates, on the authority of Nāfiʿ:
Aslam, the black Abyssinian freedman of ʿUmar—by Allah, I do not intend to disparage him—told me: “I have been informed that his children claim they are Arabs.”
And Zayd ibn Aslam, reporting from his father, said:
Ibn ʿUmar once said to me, “Abū Khālid, I notice that the Commander of the Believers keeps you closer than he keeps any of your companions; he never travels without you at his side. Tell me about him.”
He replied, “He was never the first of the people⦗1⦘ to seek the shade. He would saddle our mounts and then saddle his own by himself. One night we had already finished, and he had prepared all our mounts while he was still saddling his own, chanting:
Let not the night seize you weighed down by care;
Put on your shirt for it, your turban wear.
Be a comrade to Nāfiʿ and Aslam;
Serve the people until the people serve you.⦗2⦘”
This was narrated by al-Qaʿnabī, from Yaʿqūb ibn Ḥammād, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Zayd ibn Aslam, from his father.
Zayd ibn Aslam, from his father:
Whenever ʿUmar sent me to one of his children he would say, “Do not let him know why I am sending you, lest Satan prompt him with a lie.”
One day a woman married to ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar came and said, “Abū ʿĪsā neither supports me nor clothes me.”
He said, “Woe to you! And who is Abū ʿĪsā?”
She replied, “Your son.”
He said, “Does Jesus have a father?”
He then dispatched me to him, saying, “Do not inform him.”
I went to him, and he had with him an Indian rooster and hen. I said, “Respond to your father.”