A Night at al-Baqi'

In Sahih Muslim, 'A'ishah reports that the Prophet ﷺ would go out at the end of the night to al-Baqi', the graveyard of Madinah, greet its people and ask Allah to forgive them (Sahih Muslim 974). One such night is remembered through Abu Muwayhibah.

He reported that the Prophet ﷺ woke him in the middle of the night and told him that he had been commanded to ask forgiveness for the people of al-Baqi', and asked him to come along. Standing among the graves, the Prophet ﷺ greeted the dead and told them they should be glad of the state they were in, compared with what the living were about to face: trials coming like pieces of a dark night, one after another.

Then he turned to Abu Muwayhibah and told him that he had been offered the keys of the treasures of this world and a long stay in it, followed by Paradise, or else meeting his Lord and Paradise. Abu Muwayhibah begged him to take the first. The Prophet ﷺ answered that he had chosen meeting his Lord and Paradise. He prayed for the people of al-Baqi' and went home, and the report says that it was then that the illness in which he died began.