I say: This is affirmed in the two Ṣaḥīḥs (1). It is also authentically reported (2) that when the Prophet ﷺ had performed the funeral prayer over her and intended to bury her he said, “Let no one who was intimate with his wife last night enter the grave.” Because of that her husband ʿUthmān refrained, and Abū Ṭalḥah al-Anṣārī, may Allah be pleased with him, lowered her into the grave. It is possible, however, that by these words he meant the men who normally volunteered to dig and bury—such as Abū ʿUbaydah, Abū Ṭalḥah, and their like—so he said, “None of those who were with their wives is to enter her grave.” It is hardly conceivable that ʿUthmān had any wife besides Umm Kulthūm, the daughter of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ; that is most unlikely—and Allah knows best.

In the same year the Prophet ﷺ concluded truces with the king of Aylah, the people of Jarbāʾ and Adhruḥ, and the chieftain of Dūmat al-Jandal, as has already been explained in its proper place.

During that year the Mosque of Harm (Masjid al-Dirār), which a group of hypocrites had erected in the outward form of a mosque while covertly making it a base for warfare, was demolished and, on the Prophet’s order ﷺ, was burned.

In Ramaḍān of that year the delegation of Thaqīf arrived; they negotiated a treaty on behalf of their tribe, returned home under a guarantee of safety, and the idol al-Lāt was destroyed, as mentioned earlier.

In that same year ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl, the leader of the hypocrites (3)—may Allah curse him—died toward its end. Some months before that Muʿāwiyah ibn Muʿāwiyah al-Laythī (or al-Muzanī) passed away; he is the one for whom the Messenger of Allah ﷺ performed the funeral prayer while encamped at Tabūk, if the report about that is sound (4).

That year Abū Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, led the people in the Pilgrimage with the permission of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ (5).

It was also the year in which most of the Arab tribal delegations came; for that reason the ninth year is called “The Year of Delegations.” We shall therefore devote to it a separate book, following the example of al-Bukhārī and others.

[Here ends the fourth volume of al-Bidāyah wa’l-Nihāyah by the Imām, the ḥāfiẓ and historian Ibn Kathīr al-Dimashqī, may Allah have mercy on him, according to our division (6). It is followed by volume five, whose opening chapter concerns the delegations that came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.]