then ʿUmar arrived and said, “Indeed we belong to Allah and to Him we shall return.”

ʿUqbah ibn Makram narrated: Ibn Abī ʿAdī told us—on the authority of Shuʿbah, from Saʿd ibn Ibrāhīm, from Nāfiʿ, from Ṣafiyyah bint Abī ʿUbayd, from ʿĀʾishah—in a report traced back to the Prophet ﷺ: “Had anyone been spared the constriction of the grave, Saʿd would have been spared.” This report has already been cited above along with the chain that includes Ṣafiyyah.

That squeezing is in no way part of the punishment of the grave; rather, it is one of the sudden terrors that befall a believer—like the rending of his soul, the pain he feels at the weeping of a dear one over him, the shock when the two examining angels descend upon him, the dread of the Day of Resurrection, or the moment he must pass by Hellfire, and the like. We ask Allah to grant us security from such terrors.

Yazīd ibn Hārūn reported: Ḥamād ibn ʿAmr narrated to us from his father, from his grandfather, from ʿĀʾishah, who said, “No loss weighed more heavily upon the Muslims, after the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and his two Companions—or one of them—than the loss of Saʿd ibn Muʿādh.”

Al-Wāqidī said: ʿUtbah ibn Jabīrah related to us from al-Ḥuṣayn ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAmr ibn Saʿd ibn Muʿādh, who said, “Saʿd ibn Muʿādh was tall, fair-skinned, handsome, fine-featured, large-eyed, and wore a handsome beard.”

He was struck by an arrow on the Day of the Trench in the year 5 AH, from which he died at the age of thirty-seven, and he was buried in al-Baqīʿ.

Abū Muʿāwiyah narrated—on the authority of al-Aʿmash, from Abū Sufyān, from Jābir—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “The Throne of Allah shook at the death of Saʿd ibn Muʿādh.”

ʿAwf narrated—from Abū Naḍrah, from Abū Saʿīd—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “The Throne shook at the death of Saʿd ibn Muʿādh.”

Yazīd ibn Hārūn reported: Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid narrated to us from Isḥāq ibn Rāshid, from a woman among the Anṣār named Asmāʾ bint Yazīd ibn al-Sakan,—