and that he was counted among the healthiest of people. A sudden pain struck his throat—though on that very day he was one of the most robust of men, indeed of all the inhabitants of Madinah—and he died between the Ẓuhr (the “first”) and the ʿAṣr prayers. We laid him on his back and shrouded him in two wraps and a cloak.

While I was still sitting in my place, glorifying Allah after the Maghrib prayer, someone came to me and said, “Zayd has spoken after his death!” I hurried to him and found a number of the Anṣār gathered around him. He was saying—or the words were being uttered upon his tongue—

“The one in the middle is the staunchest of the three, the man who never feared the blame of any critic for the sake of Allah. He never ordered people so that their strong should devour their weak. He is the servant of Allah, the Commander of the Believers. True, true! That was written in the first Book.

“ʿUthmān is the Commander of the Believers, and he pardons people for many sins. Two have passed and four remain; then the people will differ, each consuming the other. There will be no order and the sacred bounds will be violated.

“Afterwards the believers will come to their senses and say, ‘[We hold to] the Book of Allah and His decree.’ O people, turn to your leader, listen and obey; whoever turns away, let him offer no blame. The affair of Allah is a decree already ordained. Allah is Most Great—here is Paradise and here is the Fire!

“And the ones brought near and the truthful will say: ‘Peace be upon you.’ O ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rawāḥah, have you perceived for me Khārijah—his father—and Saʿd, those two who were slain on the Day of Uḥud? ‘No indeed! It is the Blaze, stripping away the scalp, calling those who turned their backs and walked away, who amassed wealth and hoarded it’ (al-Maʿārij 15-18).”

His voice then grew faint, so I asked the group what words had preceded mine. They said, “We heard him say, ‘Be silent, be silent.’ We looked at one another, and the sound was coming from beneath the shrouds.” We uncovered his face and he said, “This is Aḥmad, the Messenger of Allah. Peace be upon you, O Messenger of Allah, and the mercy and blessings of Allah.”

He then said, “Abu Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, the trustworthy, successor to the Messenger of Allah—weak in body yet strong in the cause of Allah—true, true; that too was in the first Book.”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Bayhaqī related this as well through Abū Naṣr ibn Qatādah, Abū ʿAmr ibn Najīd, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Junayd, al-Muʿāfā ibn Sulaymān, Zuhayr ibn Muʿāwiyah and Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid, and he remarked, “This chain is sound.”

Hishām ibn ʿAmmār likewise recorded it in his book “The Resurrection,” from al-Walīd ibn Muslim, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yazīd ibn Jābir, who said: ʿUmayr ibn Hāniʾ related to me, and Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr related to me, saying, “A man of ours named Zayd ibn Khārijah died; we covered him with a cloth, and he related something similar to what has already been mentioned.”