He resembled Esahâq, and had a mole upon one of the cheeks of his very luminous face. He was tall and lean, sincere, long - suffering and patient, and had to endure much sorrow and grief.
He was at first engaged in keeping sheep; his children also followed the same occupation, pursuing the advantages and trades connected therewith. According to some traditions he laboured in his mission fifty, and lived one hundred and forty-seven years, but according to others he died at the age of one hundred and fifty years. Tha’alebi says that A’is [Esau] and Ya’qûb died on the same day; and that their age was exactly the same.
When Ya’qûb departed from the mansion of this world, his blessed body was, after the ceremony of shrouding it, placed in a stone-coffin, but according to another tradition in a sarcophagus of ebony, and was carried away from Egypt. The U’lamâ of the country accompanied the funeral procession to a distance of five fârsakhs, and returned in the suite of Yusuf, who had entrusted the coffin to his son Efraim until it arrived in the region of Ailia, which is the resting-place of prophets, where it was buried by the side of Ebrahim and Esahâq.* The tradition of the ‘A’râis-ut-tafsir’ is that when the coffin of Ya’qûb arrived in the Holy Land the corpse of A’is also came at the same time, because these two noble brothers entered into and departed from the world at the same period. The mourners buried these two treasures and pearls in the same shell. O Allah! Bless our prophet with all the prophets and inspired messengers, and those whom they loved, and their brothers, among the witnesses and the righteous!