…that those who were in the vicinity of the town of Busra could see the very sides of their camels’ necks by the radiance of that fire which had burst forth from the Ḥijāz.
Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn also reports that, during those days, the inhabitants of Madinah flocked to the Prophet’s Mosque. There they repented to Allah for the sins they had been committing, sought forgiveness at the grave of the Prophet ﷺ for their past misdeeds, emancipated their slaves, and gave alms to their poor and destitute.
Someone among them expressed the moment in verse:
O Dispeller of affliction, overlook our crimes, (1)
For hardship, O Lord, has encompassed us on every side.
We complain to You of trials we are too weak to bear,
Though in truth we are fully deserving of them.
Earthquakes before which the deaf, unyielding rocks grow humble—
How could any lifeless stone withstand such shaking?
For seven days it rocked the earth until it split asunder,
And from its fierce glare even the eye of the sun was blinded. (2)
A sea of fire, upon which mountains sail like ships,
Their anchorage in the earth the lofty ridges.
Sparks shoot up from it, soaring like palaces in the air,
As though a pelting cloud were pouring a torrential rain. (3)
Should it roar, the hearts of stone would crack in terror,
Its flashes quiver like meteors lighting the sky.
Smoke billowed upward until it thickened in the heavens,
So that the sun itself returned, wrapped in pitch-black gloom. (4)
It even scorched the face of the full moon,
And the night of its fullness turned utterly dark. (5)
Ah, what a sign—one of the miracles of the Messenger of God—
A lesson grasped by people of clear intelligence. (6)
Among the verses composed on the same occasion—when Baghdad was inundated that very year—are the following:
Glory be to Him whose will courses through creation in precise measure:
He drowned Baghdad with water
Even as He set ablaze the land of the Ḥijāz with fire.
[Another narration]
Imām Aḥmad (7) said: Abū ʿĀmir related to us, and Aflah ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī—an elder from Qubā—told us