—or he said: “…from the furthest reaches of the earth—until they begin to kill one another and take one another captive.”
Al-Birqānī also related it in his Ṣaḥīḥ with the addition: “What I fear most for my ummah are leaders who lead astray. Once the sword is loosed against them, it will not be sheathed again until the Day of Resurrection. The Hour will not be established until a clan from my ummah joins the polytheists and groups from my ummah worship idols. In my ummah there will arise thirty great liars, each of them claiming to be a prophet, while I am the Seal of the Prophets—there is no prophet after me. Nevertheless, a party of my ummah will remain victorious upon the truth; those who abandon them will not harm them until the command of Allah, Blessed and Exalted, comes.”
(1) Manuscript B reads: wa-yastabi.
(2) Reported by Muslim, Book of Tribulations and the Portents of the Hour, chapter “The destruction of this community by one another,” ḥadīth no. 2889 (4:2215).
(3) Al-Barqani—Abu Bakr Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Ghālib (333–425 AH/944–1034 CE)—was a prominent ḥadīth scholar, widely travelled and an avid collector of books, with several respected works to his credit; see al-Bidāyah wa-l-Nihāyah 12:36 and al-Lubāb fī Tahdhīb al-Ansāb 1:140.
(4) Manuscripts A, B, C, D and T read: taʿabbad.
(5) al-fiʾām: large groups of people.
(6) Manuscript A reads: yazāl.
(7) This ḥadīth of Thawbān—with the additional wording cited by the author—is found in full in Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, Book of Tribulations and Battles, chapter “Tribulations and their signs,” ḥadīth no. 4252 (4:450–52). Al-Tirmidhī transmits parts of it in two places in the Book of Tribulations (nos. 2202 and 2219), grading both reports “ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ.” Ibn Mājah also records it, with minor wording differences, in the Book of Tribulations, chapter “What will occur of tribulations,” ḥadīth no. 3952 (2:1304).