“My dear child, take this to your father and to your uncle ʿAbd Allah for their midday meal.”

I went off with the dates and, while looking for my father and uncle, passed by the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. He asked, “What is that you have there?”

I replied, “Dates my mother has sent to my father and uncle.”

He said, “Bring them to me.” I poured the dates into the palms of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ until they filled both hands. He then asked for a cloth to be spread out, scattered the dates over it so that they spread across the whole cloth, and said to a man beside him,

“Call out to the people digging the trench: ‘Come to lunch!’”

They gathered, eating from the dates while they only increased, until everyone working on the trench had eaten their fill and yet dates were still falling from the edges of the cloth.

Someone whose reliability I do not doubt told me that Abu Hurayra used to say, when the garrison towns were opened in the days of ʿUmar, ʿUthman, and thereafter: “Conquer whatever you wish! By Him in whose hand is my soul—or the soul of Abu Hurayra—you have never taken a city, nor will you take one until the Day of Resurrection, except that Allah had already placed its keys in the hand of Muhammad ﷺ beforehand.”

I was also told about Salman the Persian, who said: “I was working on a section of the trench where the ground was extremely hard, and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was near me. When he saw me striking it, he came down, took the pickaxe, and struck it once; a flash of light flared beneath it. He struck a second time and another flash appeared; then he struck a third time and yet another flash shone out. I exclaimed, ‘May my father and mother be ransomed for you, O Messenger of Allah! What was that?’ He asked, ‘Did you see it?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘With the first strike Allah granted me Yemen; with the second He granted me Syria and the Maghrib; and with the third He granted me the lands of the East.’”