The Night Burial of Abdullah Dhu al-Bijadayn

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧The man of the two coarse cloths

A bijād was a cheap, coarse woollen sack-cloth; bijādayn is two of them; and dhū means the owner of. So ʿAbdullāh Dhū al-Bijādayn is "the one of the two cheap cloths," and that is very nearly all we know of him. When he accepted Islam his tribe refused him everything, no food, no water, not even the money he had earned, and drove him out wearing a single bijād. Arriving in Medina so poorly covered that he was ashamed, he tore that one cloth in two, so that he could tie one about him and wear the other and appear to have two garments. From that he took his name.

❧A fire in the Tabūk night

Ibn Masʿūd said: one night at Tabūk I woke and saw a fire in the distance, and around it the Prophet ﷺ, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. I went to see what it was, and behold, ʿAbdullāh Dhū al-Bijādayn had died, a natural death. They were burying him that night. From this we learn that burial at night is permitted: it is not the general rule, and makes little sense when one is settled, but in travel or on campaign there is no reason to wait for morning. (The same is seen with the woman who used to clean the Masjid, who was also buried at night.)

❧The Prophet ﷺ in the grave

The Prophet ﷺ himself went down into the grave and said to Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, "Hand him down to me." They handed him ʿAbdullāh, and he laid him in with his own hands ﷺ and said: "O Allāh, I am pleased with this servant of Yours, so be You also pleased with him."

And Ibn Masʿūd said: يَا لَيْتَنِي, "How I wish that I were the dead man in that grave." He was that jealous of him.

❧Why it mattered to the army

The shaykh dwells on this. Dhū al-Bijādayn was not of the elite of the Companions; we know nothing of him beyond the story of his two cloths. Yet the commander of the whole army, the Prophet ﷺ himself, rose in the night when told of his death, climbed down into his grave, called for the body with his own voice, covered him with his own hands, and supplicated for him. What does that do to the morale of an army? It produces exactly Ibn Masʿūd's reaction. This is what رَحْمَةً لِّلْعَالَمِينَ looks like in practice, and it explains the depth of the Companions' love and obedience.