The death of Arbad ibn Qays by lightning

Arbad ibn Qays died by a thunderbolt that burned him and his camel, one or two days after he returned to the land of Banu Amir from the delegation. ¹

Ibn Ishaq relates that Arbad's companions, after they had buried Amir, came to the land of Banu Amir in mourning, and their people came to them and asked Arbad: "What is behind you?" He said: "Nothing. He invited us to worship something I wish were with me now, so that I could shoot it with arrows until I killed it." ¹ He went out a day or two after his words, with a camel following him, and God sent a thunderbolt upon him and upon his camel, and it burned them both. ¹ Arbad was the half-brother, on his mother's side, of Labid ibn Rabi'a. ¹

Ibn Hisham, not Ibn Ishaq, says that Zayd ibn Aslam related from Ata ibn Yasar, from Ibn Abbas, that God sent down about Amir and Arbad verses of Sura al-Ra'd, from Ra'd 8 to Ra'd 11. He says that "the successive ones" in the verse are angels by God's command who guard Muhammad, and then mentions Arbad and what God destroyed him with in Ra'd 13. ¹

Labid elegized him in several poems that Ibn Ishaq quotes, and in one he gives him the kunya Abu Hariz. See the elegies of Labid for Arbad. ^{1 2}

• The chain to Ibn Abbas is an addition by Ibn Hisham. ¹
• The editors confirm that in one copy "yabī'uhu" stands in place of "yatba'uhu". ¹