“I remain here between their two graves, worshipping God until I am reunited with them.”

I said to him, “Will you not go back to your people, share in what is good among them, and disavow what is evil?”

He replied, “May your mother be bereaved of you! Do you not know that the descendants of Ishmael have abandoned the faith of their forefather, followed false ways, and exalted idols?”

Then he faced the two graves and began to recite:

O my two friends, awake! How long you have slept;
As I find you now, your slumber knows no end.

I see sleep wedged between your skin and bone,
As though the cup-bearer of wine had served you both.

Is it the length of your sleep that keeps you from answering a caller?—
As though the cup-bearer of wine had served you both.

Do you not know I stand alone in Najrān,
With no beloved there but you two?

I remain by your graves and will not depart
Until the nights themselves return, or your echoes reply.

I weep for you all my life—but what can soothe
A heart consumed with longing save tears for you?

If one soul could ransom another,
Gladly would I give my own to ransom yours.

It is as though, with death the nearest fate,
My very spirit had reached you in your graves.

He (the narrator) said: The Messenger of God ﷺ then declared, “May God have mercy on Quss; on the Day of Resurrection he will be raised as a nation unto himself.”

This report is exceedingly rare through this chain and is mursal—unless al-Ḥasan actually heard it from al-Jārūd. And God knows best.

Al-Bayhaqī and the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir transmitted it through another route: from Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd al-Qurashī al-Akhbārī, who said, “My father related to us; ʿAlī ibn Sulaymān narrated to us, from Sulaymān ibn ʿAlī, from ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās (may God be pleased with him).”

He said: Al-Jārūd ibn ʿAbd Allāh arrived and recounted the same or something similar—at greater length, with many additional verses and passages of prose, including the story of the man whose camel strayed and who went off in search of it.