behind this.’ The voice then repeated its words, so I got up, and I had scarcely done so when it was announced: ‘He is a Prophet.’

Al-Bukhārī recorded the report from an unnamed transmitter on ʿUmar’s authority in this very form. Taken at face value, it implies that ʿUmar himself heard the cry that came from the calf, whereas the rest of the chains indicate that it was the soothsayer who heard it.

Yaḥyā ibn Ayyūb related—from Ibn al-Hād, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sulaymān, from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr, from Nāfiʿ, from Ibn ʿUmar—that he said:

“A man once passed by, and ʿUmar remarked: ‘I used to possess sharp discernment, though I have no familiar spirit. Was not this man formerly a diviner who practised soothsaying? Bring him to me.’ They brought him, and ʿUmar asked, ‘From where have you come?’ He replied, ‘From Syria.’ ʿUmar said, ‘Where are you heading?’ He answered, ‘To this Sacred House, and I would not have set out without first coming to you.’ ʿUmar asked, ‘Did you use to practise soothsaying?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ ʿUmar said, ‘Then relate it to me.’

“He said, ‘One night while I was in a valley I heard a voice cry out:

O Jalīḥ, glad tidings sure!
A man proclaims: “There is no god but Allah.”
The jinn in despair, mankind struck dumb,
and even the horses, down to their saddle-pads, made aware.

“So I asked, “Who is this?”—for this is news that has driven the jinn to despair, left humankind confounded, and even informed the horses. Not a full year had passed before the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) was commissioned.’ ”

Al-Walīd ibn Muzayd al-ʿAdhrī narrated it from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yazīd ibn Jābir, from Ibn Miskīn al-Anṣārī, who said: “While ʿUmar was sitting….” This chain is broken. It is also transmitted by Ḥajjāj ibn Arṭāh from Mujāhid, and a version is related from Ibn Kathīr—one of the Qurʾān reciters—from Mujāhid as a report halted at him.

It is plausible that this soothsayer was Suwād ibn Qārib, mentioned in the narration of Aḥmad ibn Mūsā al-Ḥimmār al-Kūfī, who said: “Ziyād ibn Yazīd al-Qaṣrī told us, saying: Muḥammad ibn Tarās al-Kūfī told us, saying: Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh told us, from Abū Isḥāq, from al-Barrāʾ, who said: While ʿUmar was giving a sermon he said….”