338 – ʿAbd Allāh narrated to us; he said: Aḥmad ibn al-Miqdām al-ʿIjlī narrated to us; he said: ʿAbd al-Aʿlā narrated to us, from Hishām ibn Ḥassān, from Wāṣil, from ʿAmr ibn Harim, from ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Maḥmūd, who said: ⦗214⦘

“I was sitting with Ibn ʿAbbās when a man came and said, ‘We set out for the pilgrimage, and when we reached al-Ṣafā one of our companions died. We dug a grave for him, but we saw something black inside the laḥd (the niche in the grave). We dug a second grave and again found something black occupying the niche. We tried a third time, and once more the entire niche was filled with that same black form. So we left him and have come to ask you what you command.’

Ibn ʿAbbās replied, ‘That is the consequence of debt; he used to defraud people. Go and bury him in any one of those graves, for by Allah, even if you were to dig up the whole earth you would find the same.’

He said, ‘So we placed him in one of the graves. When our journey was over we visited his wife and asked about him. She said, “He was a man who sold food; each day he would set aside his family’s provision, then take an equal amount of barley and stalks, chop them up, and mix them into the food he sold.”’”