—from al-Aswad, from ʿĀʾishah, who said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ never ate his fill of barley bread on two consecutive days until he was taken to his Lord.” Muslim likewise transmits it (1) from the narration of Shuʿbah.

In the Musnad of Imām Aḥmad (2): ʿAbdullāh related to us; my father related to me; Ismāʿīl (3) related to us; Sulaymān ibn al-Mughīrah related to us, from Ḥumayd ibn Hilāl, who said: ʿĀʾishah said, “The family of Abū Bakr sent us a sheep’s leg one night. I held it while the Messenger of Allah ﷺ cut it—or,” she said, “the Messenger of Allah ﷺ held it and I cut it.” She added, speaking to her interlocutor, “This was done without a lamp.”

In another wording she said: “Had we possessed a lamp, we would have used its gravy as a relish.” She also said, “A full month would pass over the household of Muḥammad without their baking bread or cooking a pot.”

Aḥmad also reported it through Bahz ibn Asad (4) from Sulaymān ibn al-Mughīrah, and in his version (5) it reads: “two months.” Aḥmad alone relates this.

Imām Aḥmad likewise said (6): Khalaf related to us; Abū Maʿshar related to us, from Saʿīd—meaning Ibn Abī Saʿīd—from Abū Hurayrah, who said: “One crescent would pass, then another, and no fire would be kindled in any of the houses of the family of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ—neither for baking bread nor for cooking.” They asked, “On what did they live, Abū Hurayrah?” He replied, “On the two black things: dates and water. They had neighbours from among the Anṣār—may Allah reward them well—who owned milch animals and would send them some milk.” Aḥmad alone records this.

In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (7), through Manṣūr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ḥajabī, from his mother, from ʿĀʾishah, she said: “The Messenger of Allah passed away when people had already grown accustomed to the two black things: dates and water.”

Ibn Mājah likewise narrated (8): Suwayd ibn Saʿīd told us; ʿAlī ibn Mushir told us, from al-Aʿmash, from Abū Ṣāliḥ,