Soon after this journey, he found himself in a very bad state of health, occasioned by the poison he had taken about three years before, which still working in his body, at last brought him so low, that he was forced to take to his bed, and died in less than a fortnight. Being delirious in his sickness, he called for pen, ink, and paper, telling his people he would leave them such instructions as should preserve them from error after his death; but some of his particular friends that were about him, being sensible of his condition, put it off, and nothing was done in the affair; which many of the Mahometans seem to bewail, as thinking it a great unhappiness to be deprived of these intended dictates of their dying prophet. During his illness he complained much of the bit that he had eaten at Choiber, telling those that visited him, that he had felt the torments of it in his body ever since, and at times it brought upon him very dangerous pains; that now his heart-strings were about to break. At last he expired in the greatest misery.
His death occasioned some confusion among his followers, for many of them apprehended he could not die, or at least that he would revive again; and therefore assembled about the door of the house where the corps lay, crying out, “Do not bury him, for the Apostle of God is not dead.” One Omar, a principal man among them, was of this opinion, and drawing his sword, swore, “That if any one should say Mahomet was dead, he would cut him to pieces:” but Abu Beker, who seems by his address on several occasions, to be the best qualified to succeed the Impostor, came in and demanded, “Do you worship Mahomet, or the God of Mahomet? If one worship the
