Yunus b. Ya’qub

I entered in to see Abi al-Hasan Musa عليه السلام and said to him: May I be made your ransom, your father used to act kindly towards me and treat me with compassion, if you deem it proper to hold me in the same regard then you could do so. He [the Imam] said to me: O Yunus, I once entered in to see my father and there was in front of him a sweet dish [made of dates, butter and barley]. He said to me ‘Come near O son and eat from this, this was sent to us by Yunus, he is one of our oldest followers’. Therefore we will protect you.Abu al-Nadhr said: I heard Ali b. al-Hasan saying: Yunus b. Ya’qub died in Madina so Abu al-Hasan عليه السلام sent the Hunut [camphor], shroud and all that which would be required [for the dead body]. He also ordered his Mawali and the Mawali of his father and grandfather to accompany his body [in the procession] and said to them ‘this is a Mawla of Abi Abillah who used to reside in Iraq’. He told them ‘dig his grave in al-Baqi, if one of the people of Madina were to say to you that he is an Iraqi and we will not allow him to be buried in al-Baqi then say to them - this is a Mawla of Abi Abdillah who used to reside in Iraq, if you prevent us burying him in al-Baqi then we will prevent you from burying your Mawali in al-Baqi’. Abu al-Hasan Ali b. Musa عليه السلام sent an instruction to his [Yunus’s] associate Muhammad b. al-Habbab who was a man from the people of Kufa ‘lead his funeral prayer’.Ali b. al-Hasan from Muhammad b. al-Walid who said: The caretaker of the graveyard [al-Baqi] saw me near the grave after this. He said to me: Who is the man buried in this grave? For Abu al-Hasan Ali b. Musa عليه السلام exhorted me about him and ordered me to sprinkle water on his grave every day for a period of fourty months or days [Abu al-Hasan Ibn Fadhal said: this doubt originates from me]. He [Muhammad b. al-Walid] said: The caretaker of the graveyard also said: I have in my possession the bier that was used to carry the body of the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وآله وسلم. Whenever a man from the Bani Hashim dies the bier cries out [makes a sound] and I would say [to myself] ‘which one of them has died?’ coming to know the next day. The bier cried out on the night that this man died, I said [to myself] ‘I do not know of any one of them [the Bani Hashim] being sick - so who could have died?’ when it was the morrow they came and took from me the bier and said to me: [It is] a Mawla of Abi Abdillah عليه السلام who used to live in Iraq [who has died].

I said to Abi al-Hasan al-Ridha عليه السلام: May I be made your ransom, what you did for Yunus [b. Ya’qub] has greatly pleased me [the Imam supervised his burial rites]. He [the Imam] said to me: Is it not part of what Allah did for Yunus [favoured him] that He transferred him from Iraq to the vicinity of His prophet صلى الله عليه و آله [before his death]

I wrote to Abi Abdillah عليه السلام asking him to supplicate to Allah that He makes me among those through whom he gives victory to His religion - but he did not answer me. I became saddened because of that. Yunus said: One of our companions later informed me that he had written to him with a similar request and was answered by him [the Imam] who wrote at the bottom of the letter ‘May Allah have mercy on you, verily Allah gives victory to His religion via the worst of his creatures’