the dam will overflow,(1) they will kill the non-Arabs and pursue the spoils.

Then he said:
“As long as time endures and the appointed span is reached, there shall surely emerge from this land a rightly guided Prophet, one who leads to sound guidance—[he will repudiate Yaghūth and al-Fanad](2), disavow the worship of false rivals, and worship the One Lord alone. God will then take him unto Himself, praised; he will disappear from the earth while being witnessed in heaven. After him the Truthful One will assume the charge; when he judges, he judges with truth, and in restoring rights he is neither inept nor rash. Next will come the upright Ḥanīf, seasoned and noble, who will extend hospitality and perfect pure monotheism.(3)

“He thereafter spoke of ʿUthmān and his assassination, of what would follow in the days of the Umayyads and then the ʿAbbāsids, and of the later trials and great battles.” Ibn ʿAsākir has transmitted the entire narration, at length, with his chain from Ibn ʿAbbās.

We have already quoted what he said to Rabiʿah ibn Naṣr, king of Yemen,(4) when he informed him of his dream before the king even related it, and of the strife and political changes that would befall Yemen until authority should return to Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan. The king asked him:

“Will that sovereignty last, or will it come to an end?”

He replied, “It will come to an end.”

The king asked, “Who will bring it to an end?”

He said, “A pure Prophet to whom revelation will come from the Most High.”

The king asked, “From which lineage will this Prophet arise?”

He said, “From the descendants of Ghalib ibn Fihr ibn Mālik ibn al-Naḍr; kingship will remain among his people until the end of time.”

The king asked, “Does time have an end?”

He answered, “Yes: the Day on which the first and the last will be gathered; the righteous will rejoice on it, and the evildoers will be wretched.”

The king asked, “Is what you tell me true?”

He replied, “Yes—by the glow of dusk, the darkening night, and the daybreak(5) when it brightens—what I have told you is indeed true.” Shiq concurred with him in that, word for word, though in different phrasing, as mentioned earlier.

Among Satīḥ’s poetry are these lines:

Fear God in secret and in public;
Do not cloak the truth of trust with betrayal.
Be to the neighbor at your side a fortress and a shield
Whenever the calamities of time befall him.(6)

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir narrated these verses, and Muʿāfā ibn Zakariyyā al-Jarīrī later cited them, saying(7): “The reports about Satīḥ are many, and more than one scholar has collected them. It is well known that he was a soothsayer who foretold the Prophet ﷺ, describing his qualities and his mission.”

It has also reached us(8)—through a chain whose veracity God knows best—that the Prophet ﷺ was asked about Satīḥ and said, “A prophet whom his people squandered.”

I say: This ḥadīth has no basis in any of the recognized Islamic books, nor have I ever seen it with any chain of transmission whatsoever.