Did all the messengers before Muhammad (sa) die? What Abu Bakr (ra) taught on Madinah’s hardest day

The year is 11 AH. The sky over Madinah is heavy. The news has spread: the Holy Prophet Muhammad (sa) is no more. The companions (ra) are stunned. Some are weeping; some cannot speak.

Hazrat Umar (ra) is standing in the Prophet’s Mosque. He is so overcome by grief that he keeps saying, “By Allah, the Messenger of Allah (sa) has not died!” He believes the Holy Prophet (sa) will come back (Sahih Bukhari, Hadith 3668). Hazrat Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad (ra), describing this event in his book Da‘wat al-Amir, wrote that Hazrat Umar (ra) was then giving the example of Moses (as), who at Allah’s call was away from his people for forty days.

Hazrat Abu Bakr (ra) arrives

Hazrat Abu Bakr (ra) was outside Madinah at the time, at a place called Sunh. When he heard the news he rode back at speed. Without speaking to anyone, he went straight to the room of Hazrat Aishah (ra). He drew the sheet back from the face of the Holy Prophet (sa), bent down and kissed him, and wept. He said, “May my father and mother be sacrificed for you! Allah will not make you die twice. The death that was written for you, you have now tasted.”

Then he came outside. The people turned away from Umar (ra) and towards him. He said:

Then, as proof, he recited this verse of the Quran:

Hazrat Ibn Abbas (ra) said: by Allah, it was as if the people did not know that Allah had revealed this verse until Abu Bakr (ra) recited it. Then everyone learned it from him, and whoever I heard was reciting it. Hazrat Umar (ra) himself said that when he heard Abu Bakr (ra) recite the verse, his legs could no longer carry him and he sank to the ground. He understood that the Holy Prophet (sa) had truly passed away (Sahih Bukhari, Hadith 4454).

What was the argument?

Hazrat Abu Bakr’s (ra) argument was very simple. All the messengers who came before the Holy Prophet (sa) have died. That is the way of Allah. So why should the Holy Prophet (sa) be outside this rule?

Now imagine: if any companion that day had believed that Jesus (as) had been alive in heaven for six hundred years, what would have happened? He would have stood up at once and said, “Abu Bakr, your argument is not right! Not all the messengers have died; Jesus (as) is alive. If he can be alive, why not our beloved Prophet (sa)?”

But no one said this. Instead, everyone accepted the verse, found calm even in their grief, and began reciting the verse in the streets of Madinah. In the words of the book Da‘wat al-Amir, the first collective decision of the companions after the passing of the Holy Prophet (sa), the first ijma‘, was exactly this: all the prophets before the Holy Prophet (sa) have died, with no exception.

There is another fine point here. The verse mentions only two ways of “passing away”: mata, a natural death, or qutila, being killed. If there were a third way, such as going up to heaven alive, Allah would have mentioned it.

Questions people ask

Does “ar-rusul” mean “all the messengers”, or just “many messengers”?

Some say the verse means “many messengers passed away before him”, not all of them, so some could still be alive. Let us see. In Arabic, the plural with “al”, ar-rusul, here refers to the whole class of messengers. That is why the Ahmadiyya translation reads: “Verily, all Messengers have passed away before him.”

And think about it. If it said only “many have died”, it would not be an argument for the death of the Holy Prophet (sa) at all. Someone could then say, “Then perhaps he is among those who are alive.” Abu Bakr’s (ra) argument worked precisely because the verse speaks of all of them. Anyone who says some messengers are still alive has to show that list from the Quran. Allah used the same phrase about Jesus (as) as well: “The Messiah, son of Mary, was only a Messenger; surely, Messengers like unto him had indeed passed away before him” (Surah Al-Ma'idah 5:76).

Doesn’t “khalat” simply mean “went by”, not death?

The verse itself answers this. Right after speaking of “passing away”, Allah says, “If then he die or be slain.” In other words, the manner of passing away is spelled out here: death or being killed. And the companions understood exactly this from the verse. Otherwise there would have been no sense in reciting it as proof of the death of the Holy Prophet (sa). We have a separate article on how this word is used in the Quran.

Perhaps the companions simply didn’t think of Jesus (as) that day?

Some say that in their grief they may not have thought of Jesus (as) at all. But notice: Hazrat Umar (ra) himself was searching for an example to prove that a prophet could go away for a while and then come back. According to Da‘wat al-Amir, he gave the example of the forty-day absence of Moses (as). If the idea of Jesus (as) being alive in heaven had existed among the companions, what stronger example could there have been? No one raised it, because no such belief existed among them.

Anyone today who says Jesus (as) is alive has to think: can we hold a belief that goes against the very verse that made the companions accept that no messenger is still alive?