was revealed: “And when a Book from Allah came to them, confirming what they already possessed—yet before that they had been invoking Allah for victory over those who disbelieved….” [Sūrat al-Baqarah, 2:89] and the subsequent verses.

Ṣāliḥ ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf narrated to me, from Maḥmūd ibn Labīd, from Salamah ibn Salamah ibn Waqsh, who said:

We had a Jewish neighbor. One day he came out and stopped before the clan of Banū ʿAbd al-Ashhal while I, at the time, was the youngest of them. He spoke about the Resurrection, the Reckoning, the Balance, Paradise, and Hell—addressing a people who worshipped idols and did not believe in life after death. They said to him, “Woe to you, so-and-so! Do you really think this will happen—that people will be raised up?” He replied, “Yes.” They asked, “What will be the sign of it?” He answered, “A prophet who will be sent from the direction of these lands,” and he pointed toward Makka and Yemen. They asked, “When shall we see him?” He looked at me—still a youth—and said, “If this lad lives out his normal span, he will live to encounter him.”

Salamah continues: By Allah, scarcely had night and day turned before Allah sent Muḥammad ﷺ while that Jew was still living among us. We believed in him, but the Jew rejected him out of envy and spite. We said to him, “Woe to you, so-and-so! Were you not the one who told us about him exactly as you did?” He replied, “Indeed—but he is not the one.”

ʿĀṣim ibn ʿUmar related to me, from an elder of Banū Qurayẓah, who said: “Do you know how it was that Thalabah ibn Saʿiyah, Usayd ibn Saʿiyah, and Asad ibn ʿUbayd—men from the brethren of Banū Qurayẓah who were with them in the pre-Islamic era and later became their leaders in Islam—came to embrace Islam?” I replied, “By Allah, I do not.” He said: “A man from the Jews of Syria, called Ibn at-Tayyihān, came to us several years before Islam. He settled among us, and by Allah we never saw a man—who did not perform the five prescribed prayers—better than he was. He remained with us; whenever the rain was withheld, he would tell us to give charity and would supplicate for rain on our behalf, and by Allah he would not rise from his place before we were drenched. He did that more than once or twice. Then, when death approached him, and when—"