when a gust of wind blew it aside, exposing her. ʿUmar struck her with his whip; Saʿd stepped forward to protect her, whereupon ʿUmar struck him as well. Saʿd left, intending to invoke a curse against ʿUmar, but ʿUmar handed him the whip and said, “Take your requital from me.” Saʿd pardoned him.

It is also related that some words passed between Saʿd and Ibn Masʿūd. Saʿd was on the point of supplicating against him, so Ibn Masʿūd grew frightened and ran off at full speed.

Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah said: When the day of al-Qādisiyyah came, Saʿd was in command of the troops. He had been wounded and therefore did not witness the Day of Victory—that is, the actual conquest of al-Qādisiyyah. A man of the tribe of Bajīlah declaimed:

Have you not seen that God has made His religion manifest,
while Saʿd sits idly at the gate of al-Qādisiyyah?
We returned and many women were left widowed,
but of Saʿd’s women not one was bereaved. (1)

Saʿd said, “O Allah, spare us his hand and his tongue.” A sahm gharb (2)—a stray arrow—struck the man; he became mute, and both his hands withered.

Ziyād al-Bakkāʾī and Sayf ibn ʿUmar have also transmitted, through ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿUmayr, from Qabīṣah ibn Jābir, from Ibn ʿUmar (3), a report to the same effect. In their wording it adds: Saʿd then came out and showed the people the sores on his back so that they would excuse his absence.

Hushaym related—from Abū Balḥ, from Muṣʿab ibn Saʿd—that a man reviled ʿAlī. Saʿd forbade him, but he would not desist. Saʿd said, “I shall pray against you,” yet the man persisted, so Saʿd invoked Allah against him, and before he had even moved (4) a stray camel (5) came and trampled him.

Another chain, from ʿĀmir ibn Saʿd, states that Saʿd once saw a crowd gathered around a man. He pushed his head between two of them and found the man insulting ʿAlī, Ṭalḥah, and al-Zubayr. Saʿd forbade him, but he refused to stop. Saʿd said, “I shall pray against you.” The man retorted, “Are you threatening me as though you were a prophet?” Saʿd left him, entered the house of a certain family, performed ablution, and prayed two rakʿahs. He then raised his hands and said:

“O Allah, if You know that this man has maligned people to whom You have already granted a prior favour, and that his reviling them has angered You, then make him today a sign and a lesson.”

A bukhtiyyah camel (6) suddenly bolted from that very house; nothing could restrain it. It plunged into the crowd—people scattered before it—seized the man between its legs, and kept trampling him until he died.

The narrator said: I saw people rushing after Saʿd, saying, “Allah has answered your supplication, Abū Isḥāq.”