indeed—Allah will settle accounts for the believers on the basis of their good deeds; therefore work sincerely for Allah. As for the disbelievers, their good deeds will merely lighten their burden; when those deeds are exhausted He will say: “Let every worker seek the reward for his work from the one for whom he worked.” (1)
Az-Zuhrī said: When death came to Saʿd he asked for a worn cloak and said, “Shroud me in this, for I met the idolaters in it on the Day of Badr, and I have kept it for this very day.”
[Saʿd also related: “We were with the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, in Makka, enduring severe hardship. One night I went out to relieve myself and something rattled beneath my urine. It was a piece of camel hide. I picked it up, washed it, scorched it, then placed it between two stones and crushed it. I inhaled the powder and drank some water over it, and by it I remained strong for three days.”] (2)
Saʿd died at al-ʿAqīq, outside Madina. He was carried into the city on the shoulders of men; Marwān led the funeral prayer, and the remaining righteous Mothers of the Believers prayed behind him. He was buried in al-Baqīʿ. This took place in the year 55 AH, according to the opinion followed by the majority, and the soundest view is that he had passed the age of eighty.
ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī said: He was the last of the Ten promised Paradise to die. Others said: He was the last of the earliest Emigrants to pass away, may Allah be pleased with them all.
Al-Haytham ibn ʿAdī held that he died in 50 AH. Abū Maʿshar, Abū Nuʿaym, and Qaʿnab (3) ibn al-Muḥarrar said that Saʿd died in 58 AH; Qaʿnab (3) added that in the same year al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī, ʿĀʾisha, and Umm Salama also passed away. The correct view is the first—55 AH.
They said: Saʿd was short, solidly built, thick-handed (4), flat-nosed, and hairy-bodied; he used to dye his hair black (5). His estate amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand.
Faḍāla ibn ʿUbayd al-Anṣārī al-Awsī: His first campaign was Uhud, he witnessed the Pledge of Riḍwān, later entered Syria, and served as judge in Damascus during the time of Muʿāwiya after Abū al-Dardāʾ.