Miracles with Inanimate Objects: Stones and Food That Spoke

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

The first category is miracles with inanimate things, not animals, food, or drink, but stones and the like. In Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī the Prophet ﷺ said that he still recognized a stone (حَجَر) in Mecca that used to greet him with salām even before his prophethood. Ibn Masʿūd narrated that they once heard the food the Prophet ﷺ placed in his mouth making tasbīḥ, glorifying Allāh, as they sat around him, also in Bukhārī.

❧The pebbles in the Companions' hands

Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī narrated that in a gathering of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī and others, the Prophet ﷺ took up a handful of pebbles (حَصَى), and all present heard the stones praising Allāh. He passed them to Abū Bakr, and they went on glorifying in his hands; then to ʿUmar, and everyone heard سُبْحَان اللَّه; then to ʿUthmān, and still they praised. But once the Prophet ﷺ had left and the others picked those same stones up, they could hear nothing. (Reported in al-Ṭabarānī's al-Awsaṭ.)

The point is not that the stones began to praise, but that the veil was drawn back. Everything already glorifies its Lord: وَإِن مِّن شَيْءٍ إِلَّا يُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِهِ وَلَٰكِن لَّا تَفْقَهُونَ تَسْبِيحَهُمْ, "there is nothing but that it glorifies Him in praise, though you do not comprehend their glorification" (17:44). When the Prophet ﷺ took up the stones, the barrier between the people and that constant tasbīḥ was lifted; it stayed lifted in the hands of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿUthmān; and when he ﷺ departed and the stones were set down, the barrier returned to where it always is.