Hadith Text
وَعَنْ أَبِي زَيْدٍ أُسَامَةَ بْنِ زَيْدِ بْنِ حَارِثَةَ مَوْلَى رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ وَحِبِّهِ وَابْنِ حِبِّهِ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُمَا قَالَ: أَرْسَلَتْ بِنْتُ النَّبِيِّ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: إِنَّ ابْنِي قَدِ احْتُضِرَ فَاشْهَدْنَا، فَأَرْسَلَ يُقْرِئُ السَّلَامَ وَيَقُولُ: «إِنَّ لِلَّهِ مَا أَخَذَ، وَلَهُ مَا أَعْطَى، وَكُلُّ شَيْءٍ عِنْدَهُ بِأَجَلٍ مُسَمَّىً، فَلْتَصْبِرْ وَلْتَحْتَسِبْ». فَأَرْسَلَتْ إِلَيْهِ تُقْسِمُ عَلَيْهِ لَيَأْتِيَنَّهَا. فَقَامَ وَمَعَهُ سَعْدُ بْنُ عُبَادَةَ، وَمُعَاذُ بْنُ جَبَلٍ، وَأُبَيُّ بْنُ كَعْبٍ، وَزَيْدُ بْنُ ثَابِتٍ، وَرِجَالٌ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُمْ، فَرُفِعَ إِلَى رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ الصَّبِيُّ، فَأَقْعَدَهُ فِي حِجْرِهِ، وَنَفْسُهُ تَقَعْقَعُ، فَفَاضَتْ عَيْنَاهُ، فَقَالَ سَعْدٌ: يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ مَا هَذَا؟ فَقَالَ: «هَذِهِ رَحْمَةٌ جَعَلَهَا اللَّهُ تَعَالَى فِي قُلُوبِ عِبَادِهِ». وَفِي رِوَايَةٍ: «فِي قُلُوبِ مَنْ شَاءَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ، وَإِنَّمَا يَرْحَمُ اللَّهُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ الرُّحَمَاءَ». مُتَّفَقٌ عَلَيْهِ.
Full Translation
On the authority of Abu Zayd Usamah ibn Zayd ibn Harithah — the freed servant of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, his beloved, and the son of his beloved — (may Allah be pleased with them both) who said:
The daughter of the Prophet ﷺ sent word: “My son is dying — come be with us.” He sent back his salams and said: “Indeed, to Allah belongs what He took, and to Him belongs what He gave. Everything with Him has an appointed term. Let her be patient and seek reward from Allah.”
She then sent again, swearing by him that he must come. So he rose — accompanied by Sa’d ibn ‘Ubadah, Mu’adh ibn Jabal, Ubayy ibn Ka’b, Zayd ibn Thabit, and other men (may Allah be pleased with them). The child was lifted up to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and he seated him in his lap — while the child’s soul was rattling in his chest. His eyes then overflowed with tears.
Sa’d said: “O Messenger of Allah — what is this?”
He said: “This is mercy — which Allah the Exalted has placed in the hearts of His servants.”
And in another narration: “In the hearts of whomever He wills among His servants. And Allah shows mercy only to those among His servants who are merciful.”
Agreed upon.
Meanings of Key Words
- Moula rasulillah wa hibbihi wabni hibbihi (مَوْلَى رَسُولِ اللَّهِ وَحِبِّهِ وَابْنِ حِبِّهِ) — the freed servant of the Messenger of Allah, his beloved, and the son of his beloved; Usamah ibn Zayd is introduced with three distinctions — freed servant, personal beloved of the Prophet ﷺ, and the son of Zayd ibn Harithah who was also the Prophet’s ﷺ beloved. A man honoured from two directions
- Uhtudira (احْتُضِرَ) — is at the point of death, is in his final moments; the passive form — he is being attended to by death, as if death itself has arrived and is present beside him
- Fashhhadna (فَاشْهَدْنَا) — come be with us, bear witness with us; shahida means to be present, to witness. She is not asking him to change what is happening — she is asking him to be present for it
- Inna lillahi ma akhatha (إِنَّ لِلَّهِ مَا أَخَذَ) — indeed to Allah belongs what He took; past tense — already taken, already completed in the divine knowledge. This is the first part of the theological frame the Prophet ﷺ sent before coming
- Wa lahu ma a’taa (وَلَهُ مَا أَعْطَى) — and to Him belongs what He gave; the child was never owned by his mother. He was given on loan, and the One who gave is reclaiming what was always His
- Bi-ajalin musamman (بِأَجَلٍ مُسَمَّىً) — with an appointed, named term; musamman means specifically named and designated — not approximate, not approximate — exactly determined in the knowledge of Allah before the creation of the world
- Faltasbir waltahtasib (فَلْتَصْبِرْ وَلْتَحْتَسِبْ) — let her be patient and let her seek reward; two separate instructions — sabr is the internal holding, ihtisab is the conscious directing of that holding toward Allah for reward. Patience without ihtisab holds the pain. Patience with ihtisab transforms it
- Tuqsimu ‘alayhi (تُقْسِمُ عَلَيْهِ) — she swore by him, adjured him; she made an oath invoking his name, placing an obligation on him to come. This was a recognised form of request in Arab culture — binding enough that he rose
- Nafsuhu taq’qa’u (نَفْسُهُ تَقَعْقَعُ) — his soul was rattling; qaq’aah is the sound of something hollow being shaken — the death rattle, the sound of the soul at the very threshold of departure. The narration does not soften this. It describes what was there
- Fadhat ‘aynaahu (فَاضَتْ عَيْنَاهُ) — his eyes overflowed; fadha is to overflow as a vessel that is completely full spills over. Not a trickle — a flowing. The emotion had filled to capacity and could no longer be contained
- Rahmah ja’alahallahu fi qulubi ‘ibadihi (رَحْمَةٌ جَعَلَهَا اللَّهُ فِي قُلُوبِ عِبَادِهِ) — mercy which Allah has placed in the hearts of His servants; ja’ala — placed deliberately, installed. The mercy in the heart is not accidental feeling. It is divine placement
- Innama yarhamullahu minal ‘ibadir-ruhamaa’ (وَإِنَّمَا يَرْحَمُ اللَّهُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ الرُّحَمَاءَ) — Allah shows mercy only to those of His servants who are merciful; innama is the particle of restriction — only, exclusively. The divine mercy is channeled toward those who carry mercy in their own hearts
Hadith Lessons
This hadith teaches two things simultaneously — and the tension between them is the lesson. It teaches the theology of patience with the most compressed and complete statement the Prophet ﷺ ever gave on the subject. And then it shows the Prophet ﷺ himself weeping over a dying child — and explaining that the tears are not a contradiction of that theology, but an expression of something Allah placed in the heart deliberately.
Patience and tears can exist in the same moment. This hadith is the proof.
The Message He Sent Before He Came
When the first message arrived — my son is dying, come be with us — the Prophet ﷺ did not go. He sent back his salams and sent back a teaching. This has puzzled some readers: why did he not go immediately? The scholars offer several answers. Some say he was occupied with something that could not be interrupted. Some say the first message was informational, and the divine wisdom guided him to send the frame first, before his presence. But the most important dimension of this detail is what it reveals about the teaching itself.
He sent the theology before he sent himself. He wanted her to have the frame in her hands before the moment of greatest intensity arrived. He wanted the words — “to Allah belongs what He took, to Him belongs what He gave, everything has an appointed term” — to land in her before the scene became overwhelming. He was preparing her heart for what her eyes were about to see.
This is the practice of the great teachers and shuyukh of tarbiyah across history: they do not arrive at the student’s crisis with the teaching in hand. They have been planting the teaching long before the crisis — so that when the moment comes, the student already has something to hold.
Three Sentences That Contain Everything
“To Allah belongs what He took.”
The child was not taken from his mother. He was reclaimed by the One who owned him. Lillahi — to Allah — is placed first in the sentence for emphasis. The ownership has always been His. The death is not a theft. It is a return.
“To Him belongs what He gave.”
The giving, too, was His. The years, the months, whatever time was given — was gift, not entitlement. This phrase does something specific to grief: it reframes the entire relationship. The mother did not lose something that was hers. She is returning something that was lent.
“Everything with Him has an appointed, named term.”
Musamman — named. Not approximate. Not flexible. Not something that could have been different if circumstances had been different. The moment of this child’s death was written before the child was created. This is not fatalism that produces passivity — it is a theological reality that produces peace. There is nothing that could have been done differently to change a term that was set by Allah before the world began.
These three sentences are the most complete statement of Islamic theology of death and loss in the entire hadith literature. They have been the words spoken at deathbeds across the Muslim world for fourteen centuries. They are what Imam al-Nawawi wanted to place in this chapter — not as abstract theology, but as living words that a mother was given by her father the Prophet ﷺ in the worst moment of her life.
Faltasbir Waltahtasib — The Two Instructions
Let her be patient — sabr: holding the self together, not falling apart, not abandoning the trust in Allah’s decree.
Let her seek reward — ihtisab: consciously directing the patience toward Allah, with the intention of receiving its reward. The Arabic word comes from hisab — the accounting. Ihtisab is the act of saying: I am counting this, I am submitting this to Allah, I am holding this in a way that I expect to find its value on the Day when accounts are settled.
Sabr without ihtisab is endurance — human and admirable, but limited. Sabr with ihtisab is worship — the endurance of the same pain, held with the same internal strength, but transformed into an act of devotion that Allah receives and rewards. The Prophet ﷺ wanted both for his daughter. Not just that she would hold — but that she would hold in a way that counted.
He Came Anyway — and He Wept
She sent again. She swore by him. And he rose.
He came with four of the greatest companions of the Muslim community: Sa’d ibn ‘Ubadah — the leader of the Khazraj. Mu’adh ibn Jabal — the scholar of halal and haram, the one the Prophet ﷺ described as the most knowledgeable of his community in what is permitted and forbidden. Ubayy ibn Ka’b — the master of Quran recitation, of whom the Prophet ﷺ said: “recite the Quran from four,” naming Ubayy first. Zayd ibn Thabit — the chief scribe, the compiler of the Quran under Abu Bakr.
These are not ordinary companions who happened to be nearby. These are the intellectual and spiritual pillars of the early Muslim community. Their presence at this moment — around a dying child, gathered behind the Prophet ﷺ — is itself a teaching about what the presence of community means in the face of death.
The child was placed in his lap. The death rattle was audible — the narration records it with the precise Arabic word that captures that sound. And then: his eyes overflowed.
Sa’d ibn ‘Ubadah — himself present, himself a man of stature — saw this and asked: what is this? The question is not challenging. It is genuine. Sa’d needed to understand what he was seeing. A man who had sent the theology of patience to this house an hour ago was now weeping in it. What do those tears mean?
“This Is Mercy”
“This is mercy — which Allah placed in the hearts of His servants.”
The tears are not weakness. They are not a departure from patience. They are not evidence that the theology he sent was hollow. They are something Allah installed in the human heart deliberately — ja’ala, placed — as a sign of aliveness, as the expression of love, as the mark of a heart that has not hardened.
The Prophet ﷺ wept over this dying child because he loved him. Because the child was his daughter’s son. Because the sound of the departing soul was real and present in the room and his heart responded to it with what Allah had placed in it. The tears were not chosen — they overflowed. Fadhat — spilled over, as a vessel too full to contain what was in it.
And then the second narration adds the principle that closes the loop: “Allah shows mercy only to those among His servants who are merciful.”
The mercy in the heart — the mercy that produces tears at a child’s dying — is the very quality that draws down Allah’s mercy. The hard heart, the one that has sealed itself against feeling in the name of “strength” or “patience” — that heart has closed off the channel through which divine mercy flows. The soft heart, the one that weeps at what is real and painful — that heart is the one Allah shows mercy to.
This is among the most important clarifications in the entire chapter: patience does not require the erasure of feeling. The Prophet ﷺ wept and was patient. Those two realities existed in the same man in the same room at the same moment. He did not suppress the tears in order to be patient. He held the theology of Allah’s ownership and appointed terms — and his eyes overflowed — and both of those things were true simultaneously. The tears were mercy. The theology was patience. Neither cancelled the other.
Usamah ibn Zayd — the Narrator
The hadith is narrated by Usamah ibn Zayd — introduced by al-Nawawi with three designations: the freed servant of the Prophet ﷺ, his beloved (hibb), and the son of his beloved. His father Zayd ibn Harithah was the Prophet’s ﷺ adopted son before the verse of Surah al-Ahzab changed the rules of adoption — and one of the most loved people to the Prophet ﷺ in all of Madinah. Usamah inherited that love. The Prophet ﷺ was seen kissing Usamah and al-Hasan together, holding one on each knee, saying: “O Allah, have mercy on them, for I show mercy to them.” He was a child who grew up in the Prophet’s ﷺ lap — which makes his narration of a scene involving a child in the Prophet’s ﷺ lap quietly resonant.
Three Questions to Close With
- Is there grief in my life that I have been suppressing in the name of patience — not realising that the tears themselves may be the mercy Allah placed in me, and that expressing them is not weakness but the mark of a living heart?
- The Prophet ﷺ sent the theology before he sent his presence. Is there someone in my life who is facing loss — and have I given them the frame they need before the worst moment arrives, rather than waiting until I am standing in the room?
- “Allah shows mercy only to those who are merciful.” How have I been tending the softness of my own heart — the quality that both expresses mercy toward others and draws down Allah’s mercy toward me?