This historical source records ʿAlī’s endowment of the land at Yanbuʿ to his heirs. Ḥimyarī (d. ca. 9th/15th c.) gives the text of the endowment as cited by Bakrī <link>, reporting that the Prophet Muḥammad gave the land to Kushd, who asked for it to be given to his nephew. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Asʿad b. Zurāra then bought the land but found the area stricken with plague and contracted an eye disease there. When he returned and ʿAlī asked him where he was coming from, he answered, “Yanbuʿ, and I disliked it; would you like to buy it?” ʿAlī thus purchased the land for 30,000 dinars. When he went to it, “the first thing he did there was [discover] Bughaybigha."
In her chapter on land and leadership in early Islamic societies in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Intisar Rabb draws on this source to demonstrate the complexity of the ʿAlid endowments establishing their entitlement to the land.
This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts,ed. Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner Balbale (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of primary sources and other material used in and related to the book.