He asked, “Abū Hurayrah?” I answered, “Yes, O Messenger of Allah.” He said, “What has happened?” I replied, “You were among us, then you rose and were gone so long that we feared something might cut you off from us, and we became alarmed. I was the first to panic, so I came to this garden and burrowed my way in the way a fox burrows. The people are right behind me.”

He said, “Abū Hurayrah!” then handed me his two sandals and said, “Go with these two sandals of mine, and whoever you meet beyond this wall who testifies that there is no god but Allah, his heart being certain of it, give him the glad tidings of Paradise.” He narrated the rest of the report at length. Muslim related it.

Al-rabīʿ means a small river, that is, a channel (with a fatḥah on the jīm), as the ḥadith itself explains. As for the word iḥtafar-tu (“I dug”), it is transmitted with either a rāʾ or a zāy; when pronounced with a zāy it means, “I compressed myself and made myself small until I could enter.”

716 – Ibn Shammāsah said: We were present with ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (may Allah be pleased with him) while he was in the throes of death. He wept for a long time and turned his face toward the wall. His son kept saying, “My father, did not the Messenger of Allah ﷺ give you the glad tidings of such-and-such? Did he not give you the glad tidings of such-and-such?” ʿAmr then turned his face toward us and said, “The best thing we treasure is the statement ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.’ I have been through three stages. There was a time when no one on earth was more hateful to me than the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and nothing was dearer to me than to have the power to kill him. Had I died in that state I would have been one of the inhabitants of the Fire. Then Allah placed Islam in my heart, so I came to the Prophet ﷺ and said, ‘Extend your right hand so that I may pledge allegiance to you.’ He extended his right hand, but I drew back my own. He said, ‘What is the matter with you, ʿAmr?’ I said, ‘I wish to set a condition.’ He asked, ‘What condition do you wish to set?’ I said, ‘That I be forgiven.’ He replied, ‘Do you not know that Islam wipes out whatever came before it, that migration wipes out whatever came before it, and that ḥajj wipes out whatever came before it?’ After that, no one was dearer to me than the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, nor did anyone stand higher in my eyes in reverence. Were I asked to describe him, I could not do so, for I could never gaze at him enough to take my fill