The Third: Scholars like Imam Bayhaqi relate from ‘Abd Allah b. ‘Ubayd Allah al-Ansari: ‘Abd Allah said: “I was present when Thabit b. Qays b. Shammas fell as a martyr in the Battle of Yamama and was buried. As he was being put in his grave, a voice suddenly came from him, saying: ‘Muhammad is the Messenger of God, Abu Bakr is the Veracious [Siddiq], ‘Umar, the martyr, and ‘Uthman, pious and merciful.’ We uncovered him and looked: he was dead and lifeless, yet he was foretelling ‘Umar’s martyrdom even before he had succeeded to the Caliphate.(262)

The Fourth: Imam Tabarani, and Abu Na‘im in his Dala’il al-Nubuwwa, relate from Nu‘man b. Bashir: “Zayd b. Kharija suddenly dropped down dead in the marketplace. We took his body to his house. That evening between sunset and the night prayer, while the women were weeping all around him, he exclaimed: ‘Silence! Silence!’ Then, saying: ‘Muhammad is God’s Messenger! Peace be upon you, O Messenger of God!’, he spoke most eloquently for a while. We looked: he was dead, without life.”(263)

Thus, if lifeless corpses affirm his prophethood and the living do not, for sure they are more dead than the dead and more lifeless than corpses!

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(262) Qadi Iyad, al-Shifa: i, 320; ‘Ali al-Qari, Sharh al-Shifa: i, 649; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa’l-Nihaya vi, 157-8.
(263) Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa’l-Nihaya viii, 291 (through various lines); al-Haythami, Majma’ al-Zawa’id v, 179-80 (through two lines of transmission).