…gone to the oven and is now sitting inside it in obedience to my command. They went and found him seated there; Shaykh Abū Sulaymān took him by the hand and led him out—may Allah have mercy upon them both. (1)
Our teacher Abū al-Maʿālī then said: As for his being cast—meaning Abraham (peace be upon him)—from the catapult, something similar occurred in the report of al-Barāʾ ibn Mālik during the battle against Musaylamah the Liar. Musaylamah’s men withdrew to a large, walled garden, fortified themselves in it, and closed the gate. Al-Barāʾ ibn Mālik said, “Place me on a shield, lift me up on the points of your spears, then hurl me over the top and inside the gate.” They did so, throwing him in; he landed, rose to his feet, fought the idolaters, killed ten of them or more, and opened the gate for the Muslims. That was the cause of the idolaters’ ruin and of Musaylamah’s death.
I have set this out in full under the events of al-Ṣiddīq’s caliphate, when he sent Khālid ibn al-Walīd to fight Musaylamah and the Banū Ḥanīfah. They numbered close to one hundred thousand, or even more, while the Muslims were only a little over ten thousand. When the two sides met, many of the Bedouins began to flee. The Emigrants and the Helpers cried, “Separate us, O Khālid!” so he set them apart; they were about two thousand five hundred. They resolved on a determined charge, urging one another on (2) and saying, “O people of Sūrat al-Baqarah! Today sorcery is shattered!” By Allah’s permission they defeated the enemy and drove them into a garden there called the Garden of Death. The enemy barricaded themselves inside and the Muslims laid siege to them.
Al-Barāʾ ibn Mālik—the elder brother of Anas ibn Mālik—then did what has been described: he was raised on spear-points until he reached the top of the wall, then threw himself down among them. He quickly rose and kept on fighting them single-handedly while they fought him, until he succeeded in opening the gate of the garden and the Muslims entered, proclaiming “Allāhu akbar!”
They pressed on to Musaylamah the Liar’s palace, where he was standing outside by a wall, looking like a dapple-grey camel because of his swarthy complexion. Wahshī ibn Ḥarb al-Aswad—the slayer of Ḥamzah—and Abū Dujānah, Simāk ibn Kharshah al-Anṣārī—forebear of our teacher Abū al-Maʿālī ibn al-Zamlakānī—both charged at him. Wahshī reached him first and hurled his spear from a distance, transfixing him; Abū Dujānah then came up and struck him with his sword, killing him.
A slave-girl cried out from the top of the palace, “Alas for the commander! The black slave has killed him!”
It is said that Musaylamah—may Allah curse him—was one hundred and forty years old on the day he was slain. His life was long while his deeds were vile—may Allah disgrace him.
Such is what our teacher mentioned in connection with Abraham, the Close Friend (peace be upon him).
As for al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Nuʿaym, he said: If it is asked, “Abraham was singled out for intimate friendship (khulla) together with prophethood,” the answer is that Allah took Muhammad as both an intimate friend and a beloved, and the beloved ranks higher than the intimate friend. He then cited the narration transmitted by Shuʿbah, from Abū Isḥāq, from Abū…