ʿAbd al-Masīḥ ibn Baqīlah al-Ghassānī then presented himself before Kisra. The king asked him, “Are you acquainted with the matter about which I wish to question you?” He replied, “Let the King ask. If I possess the knowledge I shall inform him; if not, I will direct him to one who does.” Kisra described to him what he had witnessed, whereupon ʿAbd al-Masīḥ said, “The answer is with an uncle of mine who lives on the Syrian frontier; he is called Satiḥ.” Kisra ordered, “Go to him, ask him concerning what I have asked you, and bring me back his reply.”

So ʿAbd al-Masīḥ mounted and travelled until he reached Satiḥ, who was by then on the verge of death. He greeted him and offered salutations, yet Satiḥ returned no answer. ʿAbd al-Masīḥ thereupon declaimed:

Is the noble lord of Yemen deaf, or does he hear?
Or has he departed, leaving the reins of speech unclear?
O solver of riddles that have baffled every clan,
To you has come the grey-haired elder, of the house of Sunan;
On his mother’s side he springs from Dhiʾb ibn Ḥajn,
Blue-eyed, sharp-toothed, narrow-eared in design;
Fair-skinned, loose-robed, broad of chest and side,
Envoy of the Persian king, robbed of his nightly rest by the ride;
He roams the earth on a tall, strong-limbed beast,
Mountains lift him up, mountains set him down in the east;
He fears no thunder, nor the turns of time’s parade,
As though urged on from the shelter of fortified shade,
Till he arrived with girths and saddle-straps undone,
The wind swirling round him the stench of refuse and dung.

Satiḥ then spoke: “ʿAbd al-Masīḥ has come to Satiḥ while Satiḥ stands at the very brink of the grave. The King of the sons of Sasan has sent you because of the quaking of the iwan, the extinguishing of the fires, and the dream of the mobadhan—who saw unruly camels leading pure-bred horses, crossing the Tigris and spreading throughout the land.

O ʿAbd al-Masīḥ! When the recitation (of the Quran) becomes abundant, the man bearing the staff appears, the valley of al-Samāwah overflows, and the fire of Persia is quenched, then Syria will no longer be Satiḥ’s Syria. Kings and queens—equal in number to the fallen battlements—will rule from among them, and whatever is destined to come shall surely come.”

With that, Satiḥ breathed his last. ʿAbd al-Masīḥ returned to his camp, saying: