This chain of transmission is unusual from this particular route.
Al-Ṭabarānī related the report through another path, saying in his book al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (1):
“Muḥammad ibn al-Sarī ibn Mihrān ibn al-Nāqid al-Baghdādī narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Ḥassān al-Samtī (2) narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥajjāj narrated to us, from Mujālid, from al-Shaʿbī, from Ibn ʿAbbās who said:
‘The delegation of ʿAbd al-Qays came to the Prophet ﷺ. He asked, “Which of you knows Quss ibn Sāʿidah al-Iyādī?” They replied, “All of us know him, O Messenger of Allah.”
He said, “What has become of him?” They said, “He has died.”
He then said, “I shall never forget him at ʿUkāẓ during the sacred month while he was astride a red camel addressing the people, saying:
O people, gather, listen, and understand! Whoever lives shall die, and whoever dies has departed, and everything that is coming will surely come. In the heaven there is news, and on the earth are signs to ponder: a laid-out bedding, a lofty roof, stars that course, and seas that never run dry. Quss swears a true oath: if there is satisfaction in the matter today, there will be wrath tomorrow. Indeed, with Allah there is a religion He loves more than the one you now follow. Why do I see people going and never returning? Have they been content to stay and thus remained, or were they abandoned and so fell asleep?”’
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then asked, “Is there anyone among you who can recite his poetry?” One of them recited:
[rajaz, mujawzaʾ al-kāmil]
Among the earliest gone before—
in bygone ages—signs we see;
When I beheld death’s watering-place,
no channels brought return to me;
I watched my people hurry there—
both lowly folk and men of degree;
The past does not come back to me,
nor from the rest stays any lee;
I knew with certainty that I
must join them, willy-nilly, free.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Bayhaqī included the report in his Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah through the chain of Muḥammad ibn Ḥassān al-Samtī (5) with this same wording.
We have likewise transmitted it in the booklet compiled by the scholar Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar ibn Durustūyah, entitled “Akhbār Quss” (6). He said: ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn al-Haytham al-Dayraʿqūlī (7) narrated to us, from Saʿīd ibn Shabīb, from Muḥammad ibn—