The immense affliction of the Muslims

Anas said: when the Prophet was near death, anguish kept overcoming him in waves; Fatima said: alas, my father! He answered her: "your father will have no anguish after this day." When he died she said: O my father, who answered his Lord when He called him! O my father, the garden of Firdaws is his dwelling! O my father, to Jibril we announce his death! And when he was buried she said to Anas: did it seem good to you to cast earth upon the Messenger of Allah? Boukhari alone relates the whole account; Thabit wept whenever he transmitted it, until his ribs quivered. The scholars clarify: this was not the forbidden keening, but the true statement of his merits, for the Messenger of Allah forbade keening. Hakim ibn Qays said in his bequest to his sons: mourn me not with wailing, for the Messenger of Allah was not wailed over.

Anas also said: on the day the Messenger of Allah entered Medina, everything in it was lit up; and on the day he died, everything in it was darkened. We had not yet withdrawn our hands from the Messenger of Allah but our hearts turned strange. One version amplifies: the city darkened till we could not see one another, a man would stretch out his hand and not make it out, and no sooner had we buried him than our hearts turned strange. Oubayy ibn Ka’b said: we were with the Messenger of Allah and our face was as one; when he was taken, we looked this way and that. Oum Salama describes at last the waning of the gaze in prayer: in the Prophet’s time the worshipper’s eye went no further than the place of his feet as he stood; after his death, no further than the place of his brow; after Abou Bakr, the qibla; and when discord came, the people began looking right and left.

Oum Ayman wept; she was told: what makes you weep over the Prophet? She answered: I knew well that the Messenger of Allah must die; but I weep for the revelation that has been raised from us. Mouslim reports from Abou Moussa that the Prophet said: "when Allah wills mercy upon a community of His servants, He takes its prophet before it and makes it for it a precious foretaste and a precedent testifying for it; and when He wills its ruin, He torments it while its prophet lives, destroys it before his eyes, and He finds rest in its ruin when they denied him and disobeyed his command"; a sole report of Mouslim, in chain and text. And the Bazzar transmits from Ibn Mas’oud: "Allah has travelling angels who bear to me the salutations of my community"; the Nasai gathered it by several chains; and "my life is a good for you: you speak to me and I speak to you; my death is a good for you: your deeds are set before me; what I see of good therein, I praise Allah for it; what I see of ill, I seek pardon for you."

And Aouss ibn Aouss: "the most excellent of your days is Friday: on it Adam was created, on it he was taken, on it is the Blast and the quaking; multiply prayers upon me on it, for your prayer is presented to me"; he was asked: how shall it be presented when you are but bones?