Those who washed him

Ibn Abbas said: the people gathered to wash the Messenger of Allah, and in the house were only his own: his uncle al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Mouttalib, Ali ibn Abi Talib, al-Fadl ibn al-Abbas, Qoutham ibn al-Abbas, Ousama ibn Zayd, and Salih, his freedman. As they made ready, Aws ibn Khawli al-Ansari, a Badrite of the Banu Awf, called Ali from behind the door: O Ali, I adjure you by Allah and by our share in the Messenger of Allah! Ali answered: enter. He came in and attended the washing without directing any of it: Ali leaned him against his chest, shirt upon him, while al-Abbas, al-Fadl and Qoutham turned him with him, and Ousama and Salih poured the water. Ali kept saying: by my father and my mother, how sweet you are, living and dead! He was washed with water and sidr, then dried, and there was done to him what is done to the dead.

Sa’id ibn al-Moussayyab relates from Ali: I washed the Messenger of Allah and looked for what shows on the dead, but I saw nothing: he was fragrant, living and dead. Four had charge of his burial: Ali, al-Abbas, al-Fadl and Salih, freedman of the Messenger of Allah; they dug him a lachd and set bricks over it. Ali related further: the Messenger of Allah entrusted me that none but me should wash him: "whoever sees my nakedness, his eyes will be blotted out." Al-Abbas and Ousama handed me water from behind a screen. Every limb I took seemed to turn with me like thirty men, until I had finished. The Bayhaqi calls this version very strange, yet Ibn Abi Chayba and others related it.

He was washed with the water of the well called Ghars, at Qouba, that belonged to Sa’d ibn Khaythama, from which the Messenger of Allah used to drink: "What an excellent well is the well of Ghars, one of the springs of Paradise, whose water is the sweetest of waters", by the hadith. Mouhammad ibn Ali (Abou Ja’far) says: he was washed three times with sidr, his shirt upon him. And in the version of Ibn Abbas through Sayf: a screen of Yemeni garments was hung inside the house, al-Abbas brought Ali, al-Fadl, Abou Soufyan ibn al-Harith and Ousama into it, drowsiness overcame them, and they heard a voice: wash not the Messenger of Allah, for he was pure. Al-Abbas said: nay, but yes!

We shall not abandon his Sunna for a voice whose nature we know not. The voice called a second time: wash him, his garments upon him. Then they washed him, perfumed him with camphor at the places of his prostration and his joints, wrapped him in his shroud and burned aloeswood and nadd with him; but this account is judged very strange. Haroun ibn Sa’d relates that there was musk with Ali, and he directed that he be embalmed with it: "it is of the surplus of the embalming of the Messenger of Allah".