Abī Rabīʿah and Hishām ibn al-ʿĀṣ ibn Wāʾil. We agreed, “Our meeting-point will be the Tanāḍib trees by the spring of Banū Ghifār; whoever among us has not reached it by dawn has been detained.” When morning came, I and ʿIyyāsh were there, but Hishām had been seized. He was subjected to trial and succumbed to it.

When we arrived in Medina we kept saying, “Allah will never accept repentance from such people—men who had come to know Allah, believed in Him, and affirmed His Messenger, yet turned back because of some hardship in this world.” Then the verse was revealed: “Say, ‘O My servants who have transgressed against their own souls…’” (Az-Zumar 39:53). I copied it out with my own hand and sent it to Hishām.

Hishām ibn al-ʿĀṣ later said, “When it reached me I went out with it to Dhū Ṭuwā, lifting and lowering my gaze upon it, trying to grasp its meaning. I prayed, ‘O Allah, make me understand it.’ I realized that it had been sent down about us, about what we had been saying of ourselves and what was being said of us. I went back, mounted my camel, and caught up with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.” (The narrator adds:) Hishām was later killed at Ajnādayn.

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ad-Darāwardī reported from ʿUbaydullāh, from Nāfiʿ, from Ibn ʿUmar, who said: “When we came from Mecca we stayed at al-ʿUṣbah—ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, Abū ʿUbaydah, and Sālim, the freedman of Abū Ḥudhayfah. Sālim led us in prayer because he knew the most Qur’an.”

Isrāʾīl narrated from Abū Isḥāq, from al-Barāʾ, who said: “The first to arrive among us was Muṣʿab ibn ʿUmayr. We asked him, ‘What has the Messenger of Allah ﷺ done?’ He replied, ‘He is where he was, and his Companions are right behind me.’ After him came ʿAmr ibn Umm Maktūm, the blind man of Banū Fihr; then ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir, Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ, Ibn Masʿūd, and Bilāl. Next ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb arrived with twenty riders, and finally the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came with Abū Bakr. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ did not reach us until I had already learned several short surahs of the al-mufaṣṣal section of the Qur’an.” Muslim recorded this account.