Story of the Boy, the King and the People of the Ditch

Suhayb ar-Rumi, may Allah be pleased with him, reported that the Prophet ﷺ told of a king among the people before us. The report is in Sahih Muslim 3005. Another narration with some differences in detail is in Jami at-Tirmidhi 3340, which al-Tirmidhi called hasan gharib.

The Quran mentions the companions of the ditch in Surah al-Buruj (verses 4-8) without telling the details of their story. Below we follow the narration of Muslim step by step.

The king had a sorcerer. When the sorcerer grew old, he asked the king to send him a boy to teach. On the way to the sorcerer, the boy passed a monk, sat with him, listened to his words and liked them. The sorcerer beat him when he was late, so the monk told him what to say to avoid blame.

One day a huge animal blocked the road and the people could not pass. The boy said that today he would know whether the sorcerer or the monk was better. He took a stone and said: O Allah, if the way of the monk is dearer to You than the way of the sorcerer, kill this animal so that the people can pass. He threw the stone, the animal died and the people went on.

The monk told him: my son, today you are better than me. You will be tested, and if you are, do not point to me.

The boy used to heal the person born blind and the leper, and he treated people of other illnesses. A companion of the king, who had gone blind, came to him with many gifts. The boy said: I do not cure anyone, it is Allah who cures. If you believe in Allah, I will call upon Him and He will cure you. The man believed, and Allah cured him.

The man went back to sit with the king, who asked who had given him back his sight. “My Lord,” he said. “Do you have a lord other than me?” “My Lord and your Lord is Allah.” The king tortured him until he pointed to the boy. The boy, when brought, repeated that it is Allah who cures, and the king tortured him until he pointed to the monk.

The monk and the king's companion refused to leave their religion, and the king had each of them sawn in two. Then it was the boy's turn.

The king gave the boy to some men to take him up a mountain and throw him down if he would not give up his religion. The boy said: O Allah, suffice me against them in whatever way You will. The mountain shook, the men fell, and the boy walked back to the king, saying that Allah had sufficed him against them.

The king then sent him with others in a small boat to the middle of the sea, with the same order. The boy made the same dua, the boat capsized, the men drowned, and he returned to the king again.

Then the boy said to the king that he could not kill him unless he did as the boy told him: gather the people on one plain, fix him on a trunk, take an arrow from his quiver, place it in the bow and say “In the name of Allah, the Lord of the boy,” and then shoot. The king did so. The arrow struck the boy's temple, he put his hand on the place of the arrow and died. The people said three times: “We believe in the Lord of the boy.”

The king was told that what he feared had come, the people had believed. So he ordered ditches to be dug at the mouths of the roads and fires to be lit in them. Whoever did not give up his religion would be thrown in, or told to throw himself in. They did so, until a woman came with her child. She hesitated to fall into the fire, and the child said to her: “O mother, be patient, for you are on the truth.”

The narration ends here and does not say what happened next. It speaks of her child and then says “the boy said to her”, so it is understood that her little son spoke.

The meaning of Quran 85:4-8 is that the companions of the ditch were cursed: they sat by the fire full of fuel and watched what was done to the believers, whom they resented only because they believed in Allah, the Almighty, the Praiseworthy. Verse 10 warns those who persecuted the believers and did not repent, and verse 11 promises the believers gardens beneath which rivers flow, the great attainment.

Surah al-Buruj gives no names, place, time or number. The hadith in Muslim does not quote the verses, but the narration of al-Tirmidhi mentions them with the story, and many scholars of tafsir connect the two. Some commentators also mention other accounts of a ditch, so we rely on what the texts state.

The hadith does not tell us:

• The name of the king, the boy or the monk. It only says “a king among those before you”.
• The country and the time. Even the mountain is called “such and such mountain”.
• The number of the believers who were thrown into the ditch.

• Healing and every blessing come from Allah. The boy refused any credit for himself and kept pointing to Allah, even when it cost him dearly.
• Faith is worth more than safety. The monk, the king's companion, the boy and the believers kept their faith knowing the price, and Quran 85:11 calls what awaits the believers the great attainment.
• Good company and sincere teachers change a life. A boy who sat with a monk found the truth and gave it to others.
• A tyrant can take a life but cannot stop the truth. After the boy was killed, the people believed in his Lord.
• Believers help each other to be patient. A short sentence from a child, “be patient, you are on the truth”, strengthened his mother at the hardest moment.