When Muhammad returned home, his illness intensified, and he lost consciousness. His wives agreed to administer a medicine that had been brought from Ethiopia, and once Muhammad awoke, he was irritated and demanded to know who had forced the medicine upon him. They explained that they were afraid that he would develop pleurisy without the medicine. Muhammad protested that God would never afflict him with such a shameful disorder, and as punishment, he forced each of his wives to take the medicine themselves. Ibn Hishām then relates several stories in which Muhammad declares his preference that Abū Bakr should lead the community in prayers in his stead, some of which insist quite deliberately that Abū Bakr, rather than ʿUmar, was to fill this role. Although al-Ṭabarī also reports two similar traditions, he fails to do so on Ibn Isḥāq’s authority, raising the question of whether these endorsements of Abū Bakr appeared in Ibn Isḥāq biography.77 Nevertheless, the appearance of one of these traditions in al-Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-ashrāf on Ibn Isḥāq’s authority perhaps confirms its place in his Maghāzī.78 A pair of related traditions further note that Muhammad peeked into the mosque while Abū Bakr was leading the prayers and was seen by the people one last time: according to one tradition Muhammad sat beside Abū Bakr as he led the prayers, concluding with an admonition to adhere strictly to the Qurʾān and to it alone, laying nothing to his charge. Abū Bakr and Muhammad returned to their houses, and Muhammad laid his head on ʿĀʾisha’s bosom. When someone from Abū Bakr’s family brought a toothpick (siwāk), ʿĀʾisha offered it to Muhammad and “chewed it for him to soften it and gave it to him. He rubbed his teeth with it more energetically than [she] had ever seen him rub before.” Then, after this final act of oral hygiene, Muhammad cried out, “Nay, the most Exalted Companion is of Paradise,” signaling his resolve to depart from this world, and he expired in ʿĀʾisha’s arms. A rather peculiar story then follows, in which ʿUmar refuses to believe that Muhammad has died, insisting that, like Moses, he had ascended to God only temporarily and would soon return. Although more will be said about this intriguing episode especially in the following chapter, Abū Bakr arrives from his house and silences ʿUmar by citing a Qurʾānic verse predicting Muhammad’s death. Astonishingly, however, Ibn Isḥāq reports that no one had ever heard that verse before Abū Bakr recited it at that very moment.
Muhammad’s burial is then deferred by the ensuing struggle over who was to succeed him as the community’s new leader. In a gathering at the hall (saqīfa) of the Banū Saʿīda, the prominent men of the community jockeyed with one another to determine Muhammad’s successor, ultimately choosing Abū Bakr, who served as the first caliph. In the transition then to Muhammad’s burial, ʿUmar twice offers apologies for his frenzied denials of Muhammad’s death, one given immediately after the saqīfa meetings and a second ascribed to ʿUmar during the time of his own caliphate. In both accounts ʿUmar explains his behavior as a result of his firm belief that Muhammad would remain alive and leading his people until the arrival of the eschatological Hour. ʿAlī, it would appear, remained behind while Abū Bakr and the others contended over the caliphate, attending to Muhammad’s body and preparing it for the grave. Assisted by al-ʿAbbās and his sons al-Faḍl and Qutham, as well as Usāma b. Zayd and Shuqrān, one of Muhammad’s freedmen, ʿAlī washed Muhammad’s body. When they could not decide whether or not to remove Muhammad’s clothing before washing his corpse, divine intervention made clear that he should remain clothed. Following the washing, Muhammad’s body was wrapped in three garments, and two gravediggers, a Meccan emigrant and a Medinan, prepared his grave in the characteristic Medinan style, with a distinctive niche. A dispute arose over Muhammad’s place of burial that was resolved by Abū Bakr, who recalled Muhammad as having said, “No prophet dies but he is buried where he died.” Thus the grave was dug immediately beneath his bed, in ʿĀʾisha’s house, and the people came and began to pray over Muhammad. ʿAlī, the sons of al-ʿAbbās, al-Faḍl and Qutham, descended into the grave, as did Shuqrān and al-Mughīra b. Shuʿba, who purposefully dropped his ring in the grave as a ruse to allow him to descend and embrace Muhammad’s body one final time. The scene draws to a close with recollections of Muhammad’s censure against those “who choose the graves of their prophets as mosques” and his final injunction to eliminate all religions other than Islam from the Arabian Peninsula.
While the broader context of these events is somewhat obscured by the episodic and disconnected nature of the individual ḥadīth, it is clear that they collectively relate Muhammad’s death in an urban setting, which is easily recognizable as the Medina of Muslim tradition. Moreover, Ibn Isḥāq’s presentation of these events within the sequence of his collection locates them before the full-scale assault on Palestine had begun, although Usāma’s expedition to Palestine just before Muhammad’s illness and death presents an intriguing anomaly to be addressed later in this chapter. Muhammad’s death seems to follow closely on his “farewell pilgrimage” to Mecca, which Ibn Isḥāq appears to locate in the year 10 AH.79 Yet nothing in the death and burial traditions themselves specifies such timing, and the reports alone offer no clear indication of when Muhammad died, either in relative or absolute terms: this information must be derived from Ibn Isḥāq’s arrangement.80 His Maghāzī is the first witness to this chronology, and while there is no basis for concluding that the sequence is entirely Ibn Isḥāq’s invention, the reports that he has gathered fail to present any evidence of its existence prior to his collection. The brief fragment purporting to relate selected traditions from Mūsā ibn ʿUqba’s Maghāzī affords no confirmation of his ordering of events, inasmuch as these extracts contain nothing relevant to the end of Muhammad’s life.81 ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Muṣannaf presents a relative chronology similar to Ibn Isḥāq’s, but there is likewise no indication that his sequence reflects any earlier source. As is the case with so much of our information concerning the origins of Islam, it is not possible to date this chronology of Muhammad’s death before the beginning of the second Islamic century. Perhaps Ibn Isḥāq inherited this schema from al-Zuhrī, but there is no evidence to indicate this. In any case, the received chronology of Muhammad’s death in the Islamic historical tradition cannot be shown to have existed prior to the middle of the eighth century, over a century after the events in question took place.
Muhammad’s Death According to al-Zuhrī
If this chronology is first witnessed only by Ibn Isḥāq, there are a number of death and burial traditions that can, with some measure of credibility, perhaps be linked with al-Zuhrī’s teaching.82 For instance, several other early sources link al-Zuhrī with the report of the sudden onset of Muhammad’s illness while visiting his wives, in the house of Maymūna, after which his wives gave permission for him to be nursed in ʿĀʾisha’s house, where al-Faḍl b. ʿAbbās and ʿAlī assisted her as they poured water from seven wells over him. An account of these events almost identical to Ibn Isḥāq’s is ascribed to al-Zuhrī through different channels in ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Muṣannaf, Ibn Saʿd’s Ṭabaqāt, and al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ.83 The convergence of these transmissions on al-Zuhrī suggests a likelihood that the tradition originated with his teaching. Likewise Muhammad’s preaching in the mosque during his illness, in which he praises Abū Bakr as his closest friend and orders all the doors of the mosque closed except for Abū Bakr’s, is also ascribed to al-Zuhrī by ʿAbd al-Razzāq and Ibn Saʿd.84 Muhammad’s statement that “God never takes a prophet without offering him a choice” is imputed to al-Zuhrī by al-Bukhārī and Ibn Saʿd, as well as by a collection of traditions from al-Zuhrī surviving on a papyrus of the early ninth century.85 The basic elements of the Ethiopian medicine story are placed under al-Zuhrī’s authority by ʿAbd al-Razzāq and Ibn Saʿd,86 and both identify al-Zuhrī as having circulated Muhammad’s command to establish Islam as the only faith in the Arabian Peninsula.87 Al-Bukhārī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, and Ibn Saʿd all attribute Muhammad’s denunciation of those who make the graves of their prophets into places of worship to al-Zuhrī,88 and all three impute to him the traditions concerning Muhammad’s appointment of Abū Bakr (rather than ʿUmar) as the community’s new prayer leader.89 The tradition of Muhammad peering into the