He said, “You have spoken truly.”

He further related: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then rose with me, entered his house, and handed me a staff, saying, “Keep this with you, O ʿAbd Allāh ibn Unays.”

I went out carrying it, and the people asked, “What is this staff?”

I replied, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ gave it to me and ordered me to keep it.”

They said, “Will you not return to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and ask him about it?”

So I went back to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and said, “O Messenger of Allah, why did you give me this staff?”

He answered, “It will be a sign between you and me on the Day of Resurrection; on that day very few people will be carrying staffs.”

ʿAbd Allāh said: He attached it to his sword, and it never left him. When he was about to die he instructed that it be placed in his shroud, and so we buried them both together.

Imām Aḥmad¹ also transmitted this report from Yaḥyā ibn Ādam, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Idrīs, from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, from Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn al-Zubayr, from a descendant of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Unays—or, he said, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Unays—from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Unays, with a similar wording.

Abū Dāwūd² recorded it likewise, through Abū Maʿmar, ʿAbd al-Wārith, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar, the son of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Unays, from his father, in essentially the same terms.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Bayhaqī³ also cited it via Muḥammad ibn Salamah⁴, from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, from Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn al-Zubayr, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Unays, from his father.

A similar version is given, without full chains, by ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr and Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah in their Maghāzī works; Allah knows best.

Ibn Hishām⁵ said: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Unays composed the following verses about his slaying of Khālid ibn Sufyān:

I left Ibn Thawr as weak as a newborn colt,
With keening women rending every torn collar.
I struck him while the women were both before and behind,
With a gleaming sword, steel-forged, Indian-honed.
A blade that splits the skulls of mailed warriors,
Like a shooting star from a blazing fire.
I said to him while the sword tasted his head,
“I am Ibn Unays, a horseman, never one to sit back!”
I am the son of a man whose rank time never reduced,
Large-of-court, open-handed, never niggardly.
I said to him, “Take this—from a noble hand,
Upright upon the faith of the Prophet Muḥammad.”
And whenever the Prophet set his sight upon an unbeliever,
I raced to him first, with tongue and with hand.

I say: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Unays ibn Asʿad ibn Harām, Abū Yaḥyā al-Juhanī, was a well-known Companion of great standing.