“Why is it that I see people depart and never return? Have they taken pleasure in their station and so remained, or were they abandoned and then fell asleep?”
The Messenger of God ﷺ turned to some of his Companions and asked, “Which of you will recite his verses for us?”
Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq replied, “May my father and mother be your ransom. I was present on that very day when he said:
Among the first of those who passed—
there lie for us instructive signs;
I saw the watering-places of death,
from which no traveller ever returns.
I watched my people heading there,
both young and old advancing on.
None who has gone comes back to me,
nor is a single remnant left.
I knew with certainty that I,
without escape, will reach the place they reached.”
He (the narrator) continued: A venerable sheikh of the tribe of ʿAbd al-Qays—broad-shouldered, tall, and large-headed—rose before the Messenger of God ﷺ and said, “May my parents be your ransom. I too witnessed something extraordinary from Quss.”
The Messenger of God ﷺ asked, “What did you see, O brother of Banū ʿAbd al-Qays?”
He answered, “In my youth I set out after a camel of mine that had run off. I tracked its footprints through parched, winding uplands thick with thorny scrub and the plains of Jathjāth, between the ridges of Jadhʿān, the hollow of Ḥawdhān, the desolate waste of Ẓulmān, and the gleaming plateau of Ayhaqān. While roaming those barren wilds—crossing their flatlands and scanning their stony rises—I came upon a hill whose slopes were clothed with freshly-watered kabāth trees, their drooping branches heavy, their berries like peppercorns mingled with white daisies. Nearby gushed a spring beside a lush green meadow and a towering tree; at its root I found Quss ibn Sāʿidah, a staff in his hand.
“I approached and greeted him, ‘A pleasant morning to you!’ He replied, ‘And to you—a pleasant morning indeed.’ Many beasts of prey had come to the spring, and whenever one tried to drink before the creature ahead of it, Quss struck it with his staff, saying, ‘Wait until the one before you has finished.’ The sight alarmed me greatly, but he turned to me and said, ‘Do not be afraid.’
“Then I noticed two graves with a small place of prayer between them. I asked, ‘Whose graves are these?’ He replied, ‘They are the graves of two brothers who worshipped God in this spot, and I…’