to one another, inhaling its fragrance, until they bring it to the gate of heaven. They say, ‘How sweet is this fragrance that has come to you from the earth!’ They say this at every heaven they reach, until they bring it to the souls of the believers. They are more delighted to receive him than any of you is when an absent loved one returns. They ask him, ‘What has become of so-and-so?’

“He said: They then say, ‘Leave him until he has rested, for he was amid the sorrows of this world.’ When he says to them, ‘Has he not come to you? He has died,’ they say, ‘He has been taken to his mother—the Abyss.’

“As for the disbeliever, the angels of punishment come to him and say, ‘Come out, displeased and subject to Allah’s displeasure, to Allah’s punishment and wrath.’ It comes out with the foulest stench of a carcass. They take it to the gate of the earth and say, ‘How foul this smell is!’ They say this at every earth they reach, until they bring it to the souls of the disbelievers.”

Al-Hākim said: “Hishām al-Dastawā’ī also transmitted it from Qatādah. Hammām ibn Yahyā narrated something similar from Qatādah, from Abū al-Jawzā’, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. All these narrations are sound, and they are corroborated by the hadith of al-Barā’ ibn ‘Āzib.”

The hadith scholar Abū Nu‘aym likewise narrated it through al-Qāsim ibn al-Fadl al-Hadhā’ī, as Ma‘mar narrated it.

He said: “Abū Mūsā and Bundār narrated the same report from Mu‘ādh ibn Hishām, from his father, from Qatādah, tracing it back to the Prophet. Some of Qatādah’s students narrated it as a report stopping at the Companion. Hammām narrated something similar from Qatādah, from Abū al-Jawzā’, from Abū Hurayrah, tracing it back to the Prophet.”

This hadith was also narrated by al-Nasā’ī, al-Bazzār in his Musnad, and Abū Hātim in his Sahīh.