Kuthayf al-Ḍibābī al-Kilābī al-ʿĀmirī, one of the Banū ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿah, came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when he was twenty years old. He accepted Islam and remained a Muslim for a full hundred years. Gifted with extraordinary eloquence, he was known as “the man of two tongues.” His descendant ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Mawlah narrated from him, and it is he who transmitted the words of ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl: “A swelling like the swelling of a camel, and death in the house of a Salūlī woman.”

Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār relates: “Zamyāʾ bint ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Mawlah ibn Kuthayf ibn Ḥamal ibn Khālid ibn ʿAmr ibn Muʿāwiyah—who is Ḍibāb ibn Kilāb ibn Rabīʿah ibn ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿah—told me: ‘My father informed me, on the authority of his father Mawlah, that he came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, embraced Islam at the age of twenty, pledged allegiance to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and the Prophet passed his right hand over him. He then drove his camels to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and the Prophet took a young she-camel in her second year as their alms-due. After the Prophet’s passing he kept the company of Abū Hurayrah. (He lived in Islam for one hundred years and, because of his eloquence, was called “the man of two tongues.”)’

I [the author] say: It appears that the episode of ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl occurred before the Conquest, even though Ibn Isḥāq and al-Bayhaqī place it afterward. The proof is what al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Bayhaqī narrated—through al-Ḥākim, al-Aṣamm, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, Muʿāwiyah ibn ʿAmr, Abū Isḥāq al-Fazārī, al-Awzāʿī, and Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥah—from Anas about the affair of Biʾr Maʿūnah (and how ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl killed Ḥarām ibn Milḥān, the maternal uncle of Anas ibn Mālik, and betrayed the companions at Biʾr Maʿūnah) until they were all slain except ʿAmr ibn Umayyah, as mentioned earlier.

Al-Awzāʿī reported that Yaḥyā said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ prayed against ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl for thirty consecutive mornings, saying, ‘O Allah, deal with ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl however You will, and send upon him that which will kill him.’” So Allah afflicted him with the plague.

It is also related—through Hammām, from Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd Allāh, from Anas in the story of Ḥarām ibn Milḥān—that ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and said, “I offer you three choices: the people of the lowlands will be yours and the people of the highlands mine, or I will be your successor after you, or I will attack you with Ghatafān at the head of a thousand bay horses and a thousand grey.” He was later stabbed while staying in a woman’s house, whereupon he cried out, “A swelling like the swelling of a young camel, and death in the house of a woman of such-and-such a clan! Bring me my horse!” He mounted it—and died on its back.