The Lone Riders: Abū Khaythamah and Abū Dharr Catch Up

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Two Companions nearly fell into Kaʿb's fate, delaying, then caught the army alone, and the Prophet ﷺ named each as he approached.

❧Abū Khaythamah leaves his garden

Like Kaʿb, Abū Khaythamah kept postponing until the army had gone. Returning home, he found his garden readied by his wives, a rug in the date-palm shade, sprinkled with water against the heat, and food laid out. He stopped: "The Messenger ﷺ is in the desert sun, and I am in this pleasure?" By Allāh, he would not even sit down, he saddled his camel and rode. When a lone rider broke the horizon next morning, the Prophet ﷺ said, "Let it be Abū Khaythamah," and it was; and hearing his story, he said, أَوْلَىٰ لَكَ يَا أَبَا خَيْثَمَة, "you have just saved yourself", a gentle, tough-love rebuke and welcome at once.

❧Abū Dharr walks alone

Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī's camel failed him, sick, or unreturned by a borrower, so he shouldered his baggage and set out on foot, trudging for days to overtake the army. When a lone figure appeared walking, the Prophet ﷺ said, "Let it be Abū Dharr," and it was; then he said, رَحِمَ اللَّهُ أَبَا ذَرّ، يَمْشِي وَحْدَهُ وَيَمُوتُ وَحْدَهُ وَيُحْشَرُ وَحْدَهُ, "May Allāh have mercy on Abū Dharr: he walks alone, will die alone, and be raised alone."

❧The prophecy fulfilled

Abū Dharr held stark views on wealth, that one should hoard nothing and give all away, and was too austere for public office; the Prophet ﷺ told him, "I see you are weak (for leadership); never take charge of others, for it is a trust." His censure of the Companions' growing wealth (though lawful) brought such complaint that ʿUthmān asked him to settle away from Medina, and he lived in the desert with his wife and an old servant. Dying there, he told his weeping wife the Prophet's ﷺ words that one of that gathering would "die in the wilderness, and a band of believers would pray over him", and, as the last of them left, that man was he. They bore his body to the caravan road, and out of nowhere a caravan came, with Ibn Masʿūd and ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir among them, in the days of ʿAlī's caliphate. Ibn Masʿūd wept, "Ṣadaqa RasūlAllāh, the Messenger ﷺ spoke the truth," and they shrouded him in their own garments and prayed over him in the desert, exactly as foretold.