the believers used to emigrate to the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—in Medina. Whoever managed to secure lodgings would stay where he could, while anyone who could not would sleep in the mosque until he found a place to which he might move.

The People of the Suffa, therefore, were not a fixed body who remained there permanently. Their number would sometimes shrink and at other times grow; one man might stay for a while and then leave. Those who took up residence there were the same as the rest of the Muslims, enjoying no special advantage in knowledge or devotion. Indeed, some of them later apostatized and were executed by the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—such as the tribesmen of ʿUraynah who found the climate of Medina disagreeable.

(That is, they deemed it unhealthy.) The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—directed them to some lactating camels and told them to drink from the animals’ milk and urine. Once they had recovered, they killed the shepherd and drove off the herd. The Prophet sent men after them; when they were brought back, he ordered that their hands and feet be cut off, their eyes branded, and that they be left on the volcanic plain, asking for water but given none.

Their story is related in the two Ṣaḥīḥs on the authority of Anas, and in it they are said to