for it is the successor your Messenger left among you—an intercessor whose plea is accepted and a witness above suspicion. Within it is the record of you and of those before you; it settles what lies between you; it tells your story and the story of those who will come after you. (1)
Al-Thawri and Abū Jaʿfar al-Rāzī—this being his exact wording—narrated through al-Rabīʿ ibn Anas, from Abū al-ʿĀliyah, from Ubayy regarding the verse, “Say: He is able to send against you a punishment from above you…”:
“It speaks of four punishments. All of them are chastisements, and every one of them is inescapable. Two befell the community twenty-five years after the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: they were split into factions and made to taste one another’s violence. Two still remain that must surely come: the swallowing of the earth and stones hurled from the sky.” (2)
Ishāq al-Asadī and others transmitted—through a chain reaching ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Nawfal—who said:
“I was standing with Ubayy ibn Kaʿb in the shade of Ḥassān’s fortress—today the site of the fruit market. Ubayy remarked, ‘Do you not see how people crane their necks in pursuit of this world?’
“I replied, ‘Indeed.’
“He said, ‘I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say: “The Euphrates is soon to uncover a mountain of gold. When people hear of it, they will set out for it. Those who reach it will say, ‘If we let the people take from it, they will leave nothing.’ Then people will be killed (3); out of every hundred, ninety-nine (4).”’”