“…I do not care, when I am killed as a Muslim,
on which of my sides my body falls for Allah’s sake.
All this is for the sake of Allah; and if He so wills,
He will bless even the severed limbs of a mangled corpse.”

Abū Sarūʿah ʿUqbah ibn al-Ḥārith then advanced toward him and put him to death.

Khubaib thus established the precedent for every Muslim who is executed in captivity: to perform the prayer before being slain.

Allah also answered ʿĀṣim’s supplication on the day he fell; the Messenger of Allah ﷺ informed his Companions, that very day, of what had happened to them.

Later, a party from Quraysh was dispatched to retrieve some recognizable part of ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit—he had killed one of their nobles at Badr—but Allah sent over ʿĀṣim a cloud-like swarm of hornets that shielded him from their envoys, so they were unable to sever anything from his body.

This report is recorded by al-Bukhārī.

Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah and others said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ had sent ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit and his companions as a reconnaissance unit. They took the Najd route, and when they reached al-Rajīʿ the incident occurred.

Mūsā added: It is said that the men of al-Rajīʿ were six—ʿĀṣim, Khubaib, Zayd ibn al-Dathinnah, ʿAbd Allah ibn Ṭāriq (an ally of Banū Ẓafar), Khālid ibn al-Bukayr al-Laythī, and Marthad ibn Abī Marthad al-Ghanawī, an ally of Ḥamzah—and he narrated their story in full.

Yūnus, reporting from Ibn Isḥāq, said: ʿĀṣim ibn ʿUmar ibn Qatādah told me that a group from ʿAdal and al-Qārah came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in Medina after Uḥud and said, “There are Muslims among us, so send with us a number of your Companions to instruct us in the religion.”