He said, “Come with me so that I may see him.” They accompanied him until they brought him in to Āminah, and said (1), “Bring out your son to us.” She produced him, and they exposed his back. When the Jew saw the birth-mark, he collapsed unconscious.

When he came to, they asked, “What is the matter with you—woe to you?” He replied, “By God, prophethood has departed from the Children of Israel. Are you rejoicing over him, people of Quraysh? By God, he will strike you with a blow whose news will spread from east to west.” (2)

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (3) relates: Ṣāliḥ ibn Ibrāhīm told me, from Yaḥyā ibn [ʿAbd Allāh ibn] ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Asʿad ibn Zurārah, who said, “Any one of the men of my clan you wish, all of whom I deem trustworthy, told me from Ḥassān ibn Thābit that he said: ‘I was a lad on the verge of youth, seven or eight years old, able to understand what I saw and heard, when suddenly a Jew in Yathrib cried out one morning, ‘O community of Jews!’ They gathered around him—and I was listening—and said, ‘Woe to you, what is the matter?’ He answered, ‘The star of Aḥmad, at whose rising he is born, has appeared this night.’”

The ḥāfiẓ Abū Nuʿaym records in his book Proofs of Prophethood (4)—through Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿĀmirī, from Sulaymān ibn Suḥaym and Rubayḥ (5) ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, both from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Saʿīd al-Khuḍrī, from his father—that Abū Saʿīd’s father, Mālik ibn Sinān, said:

“I went one day to the Banū ʿAbd al-Ashhal to sit and talk with them while we were enjoying a truce from warfare. There I heard Yūshaʿ, the Jew, saying, ‘The advent of a prophet named Aḥmad is imminent; he will emerge from the Sacred Precinct.’

Khalīfah ibn Thaʿlabah al-Ashhalī, mocking him, asked, ‘What does he look like?’

He replied, ‘A man neither short nor tall, with a trace of redness in his eyes; he wears a woollen mantle, rides a donkey, and carries his sword upon his shoulder. This very town will be his place of migration.’

I returned to my people, the Banū Khudrah, astonished at what Yūshaʿ had said, and I heard one of our men remark, ‘Is Yūshaʿ the only one saying this? All the Jews of Yathrib are saying it.’

My father, Mālik ibn Sinān, continued: I then went on until I reached the Banū Qurayẓah and found them gathered together, discussing the Prophet ﷺ. Al-Zubayr ibn Baṭā said, ‘The red star has risen—the star that appears only for the coming forth or manifestation of a prophet. No one remains but Aḥmad, and this is the land of his migration.’

Abū Saʿīd added: ‘When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ arrived in Madinah, my father related this account to him, and the Prophet ﷺ said, “Had al-Zubayr and his clan (6)—the leaders of the Jews—embraced Islam, the rest would have followed them.”’