“There is no blame on you if you remain with the on-lookers until you see how our affair turns out. By Allah, were it not that I am leaving daughters after me, I would have wished that you be slain before my very eyes.”

So while I was standing among those who were merely watching, my aunt arrived, leading a camel on which she had balanced my father and my uncle. She entered Madinah intending to bury them in our family graveyard. Then a man came calling, “Behold, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ commands you to take the slain back and bury each of them where he fell.”

Years later, during the caliphate of Muʿawiyah, a man came to me and said, “O Jabir, by Allah, the workmen of Muʿawiyah have uncovered your father, and part of his body is exposed.” I went and found him in exactly the state in which I had left him, unchanged in the least—save for the slight decay to which any slain body is inevitably subject—so I re-interred him.

Husayn al-Muʿallim related from ʿAṭāʾ, from Jabir, who said: When the day of Uhud approached, my father said, “I can see nothing for myself but that I will be killed. Of all people after me there is none dearer to me than you—other than the very person of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. I am in debt, so pay it off, and treat your sisters well.” The next morning he was the first to be killed. I buried him together with another man in the same grave, but my soul could not rest at leaving him with someone else; six months later I exhumed him, and he was as on the very day I had placed him there—save for a slight change in his ear. Recorded by al-Bukhari.

Al-Zuhri narrated from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Kaʿb ibn Mālik, from Jabir, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ would wrap two of the martyrs of Uhud together in a single cloth. Then he would ask, “Which of the two had memorised more of the Qur’an?” When one of them was pointed out, he would place him first in the niche of the grave and say, “I am a witness for these men on the Day of Resurrection.” He ordered that they be buried in their blood, without the funeral prayer and without washing. Al-Bukhari recorded it through Qutaybah, from al-Layth, from him.

Ayyub related from Ḥumayd ibn Hilāl, from Hishām ibn ʿĀmir, who said: On the day of Uhud they said, “O Messenger of Allah, wounds and exhaustion have befallen us; what do you command?” He replied, “Dig…”