searching for him for three days.’
ʿAlī said, ‘May Allah reward him with goodness, O Messenger of Allah.’
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Nuʿaym relates in Dalāʾil (1): ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar told us; Abū al-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mūsā ibn Abī Ḥarb al-Ṣaffār told us; ʿAbbās ibn al-Faraj al-Riyāshī told us; Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī Thābit told us, from his father, from ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Bahram, from Shahr ibn Ḥawshab, from Ibn ʿAbbās, from Saʿd ibn ʿUbādah, who said:
‘The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, sent me to Ḥaḍramawt on an errand before the Hijrah. While I was on the road in the middle of the night, I heard a voice call out:
O Abū ʿAmr, wakefulness has visited me;
sleep has fled, and slumber is refused.
I remember a band who lived and perished,
and every creature’s span is doomed to fade.
They went on, arriving at the pools of death—
waters whose drinker never returns.
They travelled their course while I remained behind,
alone, with no lone companion to aid me.
In vain I cannot set a matter right
that even a suckling infant could repair.
How long shall I abide among a people
when Thamūd has already met its doom?
ʿĀd and the generations at Dhī Shuʿūb—
all of them alike, crushed and cut down.
‘Then another voice cried to him, “O Khurʿab, your astonishment has carried you away; the true marvel of marvels lies between Zuhrah and Yathrib.”
‘I asked, “What is that, O Shāṣib?” He replied, “A Prophet of peace, sent with the finest discourse to all humankind. He has been made to leave the Sacred Town for a land of palms and fortresses.”
‘I said, “Who is this commissioned Prophet, this revealed Book, this honoured unlettered man?” He answered, “A man descended from Luʾayy ibn Ghālib ibn Fihr ibn Mālik ibn al-Naḍr ibn Kinānah.”
‘I replied, “Alas! Such matters are beyond my years; my time for them has passed. I remember myself and al-Naḍr ibn Kinānah shooting at the same target and drinking cool, freshly drawn milk together. I once journeyed with him from Dūmah on a sharp morning; he rose with the sun and set with it, conveying what he heard and affirming what he saw. If this man is truly of his progeny, then the sword has been unsheathed, fear has vanished, fornication has been swept away, and usury has perished.”’