"Pray Over Your Brother"

On the very day the Negus died in Abyssinia, the Prophet ﷺ announced his death to the people of Madinah, far away, and said: "Today a righteous man has died, so stand and pray over your brother Ashamah" (Sahih al-Bukhari 3877). He said, "Ask Allah's forgiveness for your brother" (Sahih al-Bukhari 1327). Then he took them out to the prayer ground, lined them up in rows behind him and prayed the funeral prayer with four takbirs (Sahih al-Bukhari 1245; Sahih Muslim 951). Jabir recalled standing in the second or third row (Sahih al-Bukhari 3878).

This funeral prayer over someone whose body was not present is the basis on which scholars discuss the prayer in absentia, and the Prophet ﷺ prayed for him as he prayed for the believers. Many commentators, among them Ibn Kathir, cite reports that the verse ﴿وَإِنَّ مِنْ أَهْلِ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ لَمَن يُؤْمِنُ بِٱللَّهِ وَمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْكُمْ وَمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْهِمْ﴾ (“And among the People of the Book are those who believe in Allah and what was revealed to you and what was revealed to them”) (3:199) refers to the Negus and those like him.

Yet he is not counted among the Companions in the technical sense. A Companion is one who met the Prophet ﷺ as a believer and died as one, and the Negus believed in him without ever seeing him. That is why he appears here, among those who sheltered and affirmed the Prophet ﷺ: a king who never stood in his presence, but whom the Prophet ﷺ called his brother.