ʿAbd Allah said:
“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ set out from Madinah toward the idolaters to fight them. My father, ʿAbd Allah, said to me, ‘O Jābir, there is no harm in your remaining with the lookouts who guard Madinah until we know how matters turn out. By Allah, were it not that I am leaving daughters behind, I would have loved for you to be slain before my very eyes.’

“While I was with the guards, my aunt arrived with my father and my uncle, having balanced them on a pack-camel. She brought them into Madinah intending to bury them in our family cemetery. Just then a man caught up with us, calling out, ‘The Prophet ﷺ commands you to return the slain and bury them in the very spots where they were killed.’ We therefore took them back and buried them where they had fallen.

“Later, during the caliphate of Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān, a man came to me and said, ‘O Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allah, by Allah, the workers of Muʿāwiyah have disturbed your father’s grave and part of him has become exposed.’ I went out and found him exactly as I had buried him—unchanged, save for what the state of being slain necessarily leaves upon a body.” Imām Aḥmad then related the incident of how Jābir paid his father’s debts, a story that is authentically recorded in the two Ṣaḥīḥs (1).

Al-Bayhaqī (2) reports—through the chain of Ḥammād ibn Zayd, from Ayyūb, from Abū’z-Zubayr, from Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allah—that Jābir said: “When Muʿāwiyah diverted the water-channel at the site of the martyrs of Uḥud, forty years after the battle, he called us to assist. We came, exhumed the bodies, and a spade struck the foot of Ḥamzah, whereupon blood flowed.”

In another wording transmitted by Ibn Isḥāq, Jābir said: “We brought them out as though they had been buried only yesterday.”

Al-Wāqidī (3) relates that when Muʿāwiyah wished to extend the canal, he had a crier proclaim, “Whoever has a relative slain at Uḥud, let him attend!” Jābir said: “We dug up the graves and found my father lying as if asleep, exactly as he had been. In the neighbouring grave was ʿAmr ibn al-Jamūḥ, his hand over his wound; when it was lifted, the wound began to bleed.

“It is also said that a fragrance like musk wafted from their graves—may Allah be pleased with them all—and this occurred forty-six years after the day they had been buried.”

Al-Bukhārī (4) records: Musaddad narrated to us; Bishr ibn al-Muḍaffar narrated to us; Ḥusayn al-Muʿallim narrated to us, from ʿAṭāʾ, from Jābir, who said: “On the night before Uḥud my father called me and said, ‘I think I shall be among the first of the Prophet’s ﷺ Companions to be killed tomorrow. After the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, no one is dearer to me than you. I owe a debt—so repay it—and treat your sisters well.’ The next morning he was the first to be killed. I buried another man in the same grave with him, but my heart was uneasy leaving him with someone else. Six months later I exhumed him and found him as fresh as the day I had laid him to rest, except for a small change in his ear.”

It is likewise established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs (5), through the narration of Shuʿbah from Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir, from Jābir, that when his father was killed