and a number of others, the last of them to pass away being Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd al-Dimashqī. Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb and others declared him reliable (1). He took up the study of ḥadith only in middle age; had he begun listening while still young, he would have possessed the most elevated chains of his generation. He was born in 230 AH and died in the month of Ramaḍān, 330 AH.

Abū al-Faḍl ibn Tāj al-Umānāʾ related to us; ʿAbd al-Muʿizz ibn Muḥammad and Zaynab bint Abī al-Qāsim also informed us, saying:

Zāhir ibn Ṭāhir informed us; Abū Saʿīd al-Kanjarūdhī (2) narrated to us; the ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad told us; Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Harawī in Damascus reported to us; Muḥammad ibn Ḥammād informed us; ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated from Maʿmar, from Abū Hārūn al-ʿAbdī and from Muʿāwiya ibn Qurra (3), from Abū al-Ṣiddīq al-Nājī, from Abū Saʿīd who said:

“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ mentioned a tribulation that will strike this community such that no one will find any refuge. Then Allah will raise from among my descendants a man who will fill the earth with equity and justice just as it had been filled with oppression and tyranny. The dwellers of heaven and the dwellers of earth will be pleased with him. The sky will withhold none of its rain but will pour it down in abundance, and the earth will hold back nothing of its vegetation but will cause it to appear, so that the living will wish that the dead were alive. He will remain for seven years, or eight, or nine years.” (4)