Hubayrah narrated to us; al-Muʿtamir ibn Sulaymān related to us, from his father, from Anas ibn Mālik, who said:
A delegation from the tribe of Iyād came to the Prophet—may God’s peace and blessings be upon him. He asked, “What has become of Quss ibn Sāʿidah?”
They replied, “He has died.”
He said, “I once heard from him some words which I think I still remember.”
Some of the delegation said, “We remember them, Messenger of God.”
He said, “Let me hear them.”
One of them recited:
“I was standing in the market of ʿUkāẓ when he proclaimed:
‘O people, listen, pay heed, and take it to heart!
Everyone who lives will die; everyone who dies is gone for good;
whatever is destined to arrive will surely arrive.
A dark night, a sky full of constellations,
shining stars, seas that surge,
mountains firmly fixed, rivers ever flowing—
indeed, in the heavens is a message, and on the earth are lessons to behold.
I see people dying and never returning.
Have they approved of staying, so they remained?
Or were they abandoned, so they fell asleep?
Quss has sworn an oath by God—an oath free of sin—that with God there is a religion more pleasing than the one you now follow.’”
He then began to recite these verses (from the mujazūʾ form of al-Kāmil metre):
Among those who passed away of old—
the earliest peoples—there are clear signs for us;
When I beheld the slaughter-grounds
where no departed ever returns (1)
And saw my tribe bound for that abode—
the great among them and the small alike (2)
I knew with certainty that, without a doubt,
I too must go where all of them have gone.
Al-Bayhaqī then transmitted the report through additional chains, to which we have already drawn attention.
He continued:
“This ḥadīth has also been narrated by al-Kalbī, from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Ibn ʿAbbās, with some additions and omissions; through another route it is related—though disconnected—from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī; and in abridged form from Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ and Abū Hurayrah.
I say: It has likewise been reported from ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit, as mentioned earlier, and from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd, as Abū Nuʿaym recounts in his work Dalāʾil (3): from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān al-Wāsiṭī, from Abū al-Walīd Ṭarīf ibn ʿUbayd Allāh—the client of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib in Mosul—from Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Ḥimmanī, from Abū Muʿāwiyah, from al-Aʿmash, from Abū Ḍaḥḥā, from Masrūq, from Ibn Masʿūd; he cited it.
Abū Nuʿaym also transmitted the aforementioned report of ʿUbādah and that of Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ (4).
Al-Bayhaqī concluded:
“When a report is conveyed through multiple routes—even if some of them are weak—this shows that the ḥadīth has a basis. God knows best.”