The signs of the Prophet's ﷺ approaching death

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Before we come to his final sickness, we should see how many signs the Qurʾān and the Sunnah had given that this time would come, signs easy to read in hindsight, yet which registered with no one when they were spoken. For it is human nature not to dwell on death, least of all the death of those we love, and the more we love someone, the less we let ourselves think of it; so how could anyone imagine that the Prophet ﷺ would ever go? The thought did not even enter their heads. So plain were some of these verses that when Abū Bakr recited them on the day of his death, ʿUmar in one version asked whether they were even from the Qurʾān, and in another said it was as if he had never heard them before, he had not understood them in this light.

❧The verses

Sūrat al-Zumar 39:30, إِنَّكَ مَيِّتٌ وَإِنَّهُمْ مَيِّتُونَ, "you are going to die, and they are going to die," as explicit as words can be. Āli ʿImrān 3:144, وَمَا مُحَمَّدٌ إِلَّا رَسُولٌ قَدْ خَلَتْ مِنْ قَبْلِهِ الرُّسُلُ أَفَإِنْ مَاتَ أَوْ قُتِلَ انْقَلَبْتُمْ عَلَىٰ أَعْقَابِكُمْ, revealed at Uḥud when they thought he had been killed: "Muḥammad is but a messenger; messengers have passed before him, so if he dies or is slain, will you turn back on your heels?", a matter of when, not whether. And al-Anbiyāʾ 21:34, وَمَا جَعَلْنَا لِبَشَرٍ مِنْ قَبْلِكَ الْخُلْدَ, "We granted no man before you everlasting life": if anyone were to have been given eternal life in this world it would have been the Prophet ﷺ, and Allāh tells even him, "if you are to die, do they imagine they will live forever?"

❧The signs in the Sunnah

In Ramaḍān of the tenth year, two months before he left for Ḥajj, came perhaps the first premonition: Jibrīl, who reviewed the Qurʾān with him once each Ramaḍān, came that year and reviewed it twice, without a word of explanation, and something felt different. Allāh had not told him outright that he would die; He was suggesting it, indirectly. Sūrat al-Naṣr, إِذَا جَاءَ نَصْرُ اللَّهِ وَالْفَتْحُ, spoke of the great Conquest and of mankind entering Islam in throngs, then commanded him to praise Allāh and seek forgiveness: your end is near, prepare to meet your Lord. When ʿUmar, in his caliphate, tested the Ṣaḥābah on its meaning and none answered, it was Ibn ʿAbbās who said it was a sign to the Prophet ﷺ that his term had come. He hinted at it, too, to those he loved most: sending Muʿādh ibn Jabal to Yemen, one of the last he appointed, and greatly beloved, he walked beside him though Muʿādh rode, and Muʿādh, out of love, wished to walk with him; he told him, "I love you, O Muʿādh," and then, "perhaps you will not see me after this year, perhaps you will pass my masjid and my grave," and Muʿādh wept. And the very Ḥajj was named al-Wadāʿ, the Farewell, because he was bidding the people goodbye and telling them to take everything from him now, for he might not be with them the next year.

❧Uḥud, and the night at al-Baqīʿ

Toward the end of Ṣafar, just before he fell ill, he visited the site of Uḥud and made a special duʿāʾ for its martyrs, foremost his uncle Ḥamzah, whom he so loved, and said, "wait for me at the Ḥawḍ; I will meet you there." And on perhaps the last day of Ṣafar or the first of Rabīʿ al-Awwal, he woke late at night, after ʿishāʾ, and knocked on the door of his servant Abū Muwayhibah: "Jibrīl has commanded me to go to al-Baqīʿ, come with me." They went to the graveyard of Medina, his last visit to it, and he made a beautiful duʿāʾ for its dead, and on the way back told Abū Muwayhibah (who told it only later) that he had been given the choice between the keys of this world and everlasting life in it, then Jannah, or to meet his Lord now and enter Jannah, both ending in Jannah, but one now and one at the end of days. Abū Muwayhibah said, "may my mother and father be your ransom, take this world for all of eternity, and then Jannah." But the Prophet ﷺ said, "no, I have already chosen." Still it did not register with the Ṣaḥābah that this was imminent; they thought only of some distant future, unable to imagine life without him ﷺ. And in this there is a wisdom of visiting graveyards, that Jibrīl sent him to al-Baqīʿ to be reminded of his own death, as we too should visit the graves to remember ours.