Lu'lu' wal-Marjan

Narrated by Al-Bara’ bin ‘Azib (may Allah be pleased with him): Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) came to my father at his house and bought a saddle from him. Then he said to my father, “Send it with your son to go with me.” Al-Bara’ (may Allah be pleased with him) said: So I carried the saddle and went with him, and my father began to weigh the price in silver. My father asked him, “O Abu Bakr! Tell me about the incident when you migrated with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) from the Cave of Thawr—how did you both spend that time?” Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) replied: “We traveled all night and the next morning as well. But when it was midday and the road became completely deserted, with no one passing by, we saw a long rock. There was no shade from the sun under it. We stopped there, and I prepared a place for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) with my own hands and spread a cloth there. Then I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah! Rest here, and I will keep watch.’ The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) slept, and I went out to look around at the situation. By chance, I met a shepherd who also wanted to bring his flock of sheep to the shade of the same rock under which we had camped. I asked him, ‘To which tribe do you belong?’ He replied, ‘To such-and-such a person from Medina (or, the narrator said, from Mecca).’ I asked him, ‘Can we get some milk from your sheep?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I asked, ‘Can you milk for us?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ So he brought a sheep. I told him to first clean the udder from dust, hair, and other impurities.” Abu Ishaq, the narrator, said: “I saw Al-Bara’ bin ‘Azib (may Allah be pleased with him) strike one hand on the other to demonstrate how the udder was cleaned.” He milked the sheep into a wooden bowl. I had kept a vessel with me for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him); he used to drink water from it and perform ablution. Then I came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) (he was sleeping). I did not want to wake him, but later when I came, he was already awake. I poured water over the milk vessel until its bottom became cool, then I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah! Please drink the milk.’ Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “Then the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) drank the milk, which made me happy. Then he said, ‘Is it not time to depart yet?’ I said, ‘It has come.’ He said that when the sun had declined, we set out. Later, Suraqah bin Malik pursued us and reached us at this place. I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah! Now he has come very close to us.’ The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, ‘Do not grieve; Allah is with us.’ Then he supplicated against him, and his horse sank into the ground up to its belly. I think the ground was very hard—this doubt was from Zuhair, the narrator of the hadith. Suraqah said, ‘I think you have supplicated against me. If now you pray for me (to be saved from this calamity), by Allah, I will turn back all those who come searching for you.’ So the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) prayed, and he was saved. After that, whoever met him on the way, he would say, ‘I have searched a lot; they are definitely not here.’ Thus, whoever he met, he would turn them back with him. Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) said that he fulfilled the promise he had made to us.”