On that same day the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was cupped by the freedman of Banū Bayāḍah, using a horn and a lancet. Thereafter he lived for three more years, until the illness in which he passed away, when he said:

“I have never ceased to feel the effect of that morsel I tasted from the sheep on the day of Khaybar, and now has come the moment when my aorta is severed.”

Thus the Messenger of Allah ﷺ died as a martyr. (1)

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (2) said: When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was settled, Zaynab bint al-Ḥārith—the wife of Sallām ibn Mishkam—presented him with a roasted sheep. She had asked, “Which part does the Messenger of Allah ﷺ like best?” and was told, “The foreleg.” She therefore put extra poison in the foreleg and poisoned the rest of the sheep as well. When she placed it before him, he took the foreleg and chewed a morsel but did not swallow it. Sitting with him was Bishr ibn al-Barāʾ ibn Maʿrūr, who took what the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had taken. Bishr swallowed his bite, whereas the Messenger of Allah ﷺ spat his out and said,

“This bone is telling me that it is poisoned.”

He summoned the woman, and she confessed.

He asked, “What moved you to do this?”

She replied, “My people have suffered in a way that is not hidden from you. I thought: if he is a liar, we shall be rid of him; and if he is a Prophet, he will be informed.”

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ pardoned her, but Bishr died from the portion he had eaten.

Ibn Isḥāq (3) also related, on the authority of Marwān ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī Saʿīd ibn al-Muʿallā: During the illness in which he passed away—when Umm Bishr bint al-Barāʾ ibn Maʿrūr entered— the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said,

“O Umm Bishr, right now I feel my aorta being severed because of that morsel I tasted with your brother at Khaybar.”

Ibn Hishām remarked: The abhar is the vein attached to the heart. He added: The Muslims therefore regarded the Messenger of Allah ﷺ as having died a martyr, along with the honor of prophethood with which Allah distinguished him.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Bazzār (4) said: Hilāl ibn Bishr and Sulaymān ibn Sayf al-Ḥarrānī narrated to us; Abū ʿAttāb Sahl ibn Ḥammād narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abī Naḍrah narrated from his father, from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, that a Jewish woman presented the Messenger of Allah ﷺ with a cooked sheep. When the people stretched out their hands to eat, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said,

“Hold back, for one of its limbs is telling me that it is poisoned.”

He then sent for the woman and asked, “Did you poison this food?” She replied, “Yes.”

He asked, “What made you do that?”

She said, “I wished—if you were lying—to relieve the people of you; and if you were truthful, I knew that Allah would inform you.”

He then stretched out his hand and said, “Eat, in the name of Allah.” The narrator said: We ate, mentioning the name of Allah, and none of us was harmed.

Al-Bazzār then commented: This report is narrated from ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abī Naḍrah only through this chain. I say: it contains marked irregularity and strangeness; Allah knows best.