—we said to them: Yet Muhammad ﷺ was granted something superior to that: a light that shone at his right wherever he sat, and at his left wherever he rose or sat, visible to all people. That light will remain until the Day of Resurrection; do you not see the brilliant radiance that can be perceived emanating from his grave ﷺ from the distance of a day’s and a night’s journey? This is Ibn Ḥāmid’s exact wording.
What he relates about this light is exceedingly unusual.
We have already mentioned in the Sīrah, under the conversion of al-Ṭufayl ibn ʿAmr al-Dawsī, that he asked the Prophet ﷺ for a sign to help him guide his people. The Prophet prayed for him, and when al-Ṭufayl approached his tribe from his house, a light flashed between his eyes like a lamp. He thereupon said, “Allahumma fī ghayri hādhā al-mawdiʿ, fa-innahum yaẓunnūnahu muthlah” (“O Allah, not in this spot, for they will think it a blemish”), whereupon the light moved to the tip of his whip. They now gazed at it as though it were a lamp, and Allah guided them through him by the blessing of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and by his supplication, “Allahumma ihdi Dawsan, waʾti bihim” (1). For that reason al-Ṭufayl was called Dhū al-Nūr, “the Man of Light.”
He likewise cited the report of Uṣayd ibn Ḥuḍayr and ʿAbbād ibn Bishr: when the two left the Prophet ﷺ on a pitch-dark night, the end of one of their staffs began to glow, and when they separated each of them had the end of his own staff illuminated. This appears in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (2) and elsewhere.
Abū Zurʿah al-Rāzī stated in his book Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah: “Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb narrated to us, Ḥammād ibn Salamah narrated to us from Thābit on the authority of Anas ibn Mālik that ʿAbbād ibn Bishr and Uṣayd ibn Ḥuḍayr left the Prophet ﷺ on a night of intense, impenetrable darkness (3). The staff of one of them shone like a lantern, and they walked by its light; when they parted for their respective homes, the staff of each of them glowed.”
He then transmitted from Ibrāhīm ibn Ḥamzah ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥamzah ibn Muṣʿab ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām, and from Yaʿqūb ibn Ḥumayd al-Madani—both from Sufyān ibn Ḥamzah, from Kathīr ibn Zayd, from Muḥammad ibn Ḥamzah ibn ʿAmr al-Aslamī, from his father—who said: “We travelled with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in a company on a night so dark that nothing could be seen. My fingers began to emit light, so the people gathered behind them, and none of them was lost, while my fingers were indeed shining (4).”
Hishām ibn ʿAmmār narrated in ‘Al-Mabʿath’: “ʿAbd al-Aʿlā ibn Muḥammad al-Bakrī related to us, Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān al-Baṣrī related to us, Abū al-Tayyāḥ al-Ḍabbaʿī related to us: Muṭarrif ibn ʿAbdullāh used to live in the countryside and would come in every Friday, and at times he would be illumined …”