He said:
“If you have spoken truthfully, O Salman, then you have met Jesus, son of Mary.”
This wording is exceedingly strange—indeed, denounced—for the interval of suspended revelation (al-fatrah) is put at no less than four hundred years, and some say six hundred solar years, whereas the longest span ever claimed for Salmān’s life is three hundred and fifty years. ʿAbbās ibn Yazīd al-Baḥrānī even reports the consensus of his teachers that he lived two hundred and fifty years, though opinions differ over any extension up to three hundred and fifty. God knows best.
What appears more likely is that he said:
“You have met the trustee of Jesus, son of Mary.”
This, in fact, is entirely plausible. (1)
Al-Suhaylī (2) remarked that the unnamed transmitter is al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUmārah, who is weak by unanimous verdict; yet should the report prove sound, there would be nothing objectionable in it. Ibn Jarīr relates that the Messiah descended from heaven after being raised up, found his mother and another woman weeping beside the trunk of the one thought crucified, informed them that he had not been killed, and then dispatched the disciples.
He added: If one descent is possible, multiple descents are equally possible. The public, manifest descent will be when he breaks the cross, kills the swine, marries a woman from the tribe of Judhām, and, upon his death, is buried in the chamber adjoining the Prophet’s ﷺ Rawḍah.
Al-Bayhaqī, in Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah, has transmitted this story of Salmān through the isnād of Yūnus ibn Bukayr from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, as cited earlier. He also narrated it from al-Ḥākim, from al-Aṣamm, from Yaḥyā ibn Abī Ṭālib—ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim told us; Ḥātim ibn Abī Ṣaghīrah told us; from Simāk ibn Ḥarb; from Zayd ibn Ṣūḥān—who said he heard Salmān recount the beginnings of his Islam. Salmān gave a lengthy account, mentioning that he was from Rāmhormoz, that he had an elder, affluent brother while he himself lived in his brother’s care, and that the dihqān’s son was his close companion. The two of them would attend their tutor together, and that boy used to visit a group of Christian ascetics in a cave. Salmān asked to accompany him, but the boy replied, “You are still young, and I fear you may betray them and my father would kill them.” Salmān therefore pledged that nothing of the sort would happen