Al-Umawī said: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ziyād narrated to us, from Ibn Isḥāq, who said: Yaʿqūb ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar [ibn ʿAmr] ibn Umayyah also narrated to me, from his father, from his grandfather ʿAmr ibn Umayyah, who said:

“I returned with some slaves that al-Najāshī had given me. They said to me, ‘ʿAmr, if we were to see the Messenger of Allah we would recognize him without your having to tell us.’

“Abū Bakr passed by and I asked them, ‘Is this he?’ They said, ‘No.’ ʿUmar passed by and I asked, ‘Is this he?’ They said, ‘No.’ When we entered the house, the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—walked past. They called out, ‘ʿAmr, this is the Messenger of Allah!’ I looked, and indeed it was he. No one had informed them; they recognized him from what they had found written in their scriptures.

“We have already mentioned Saba’s warning to his people and his glad tidings of the coming of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—in the lines of poetry quoted in his biography, so there is no need to repeat them here. We have likewise referred to what the two Jewish rabbis said to Tubbaʿ al-Yamānī when he besieged the people of Madinah: ‘It is the place of migration for a Prophet who will appear at the end of time.’ He withdrew and composed verses in which he conveyed salutations to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.

The Story of Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan al-Himyarī and His Foretelling of the Unlettered Prophet

The ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Sahl al-Kharāʾiṭī relates in his book “Hawātif al-Jinān”: ʿAlī ibn Ḥarb narrated to us; Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Ḥakīm narrated to us; ʿAmr ibn Bakr—who is Ibn Bakkār al-Qaʿnabī—narrated to us, from Aḥmad ibn al-Qāsim, from Muḥammad ibn al-Sāʾib al-Kalbī, from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās—may Allah be pleased with him—who said:

“When Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan”—Abū al-Mundhir added: his name was al-Nuʿmān ibn Qays—“triumphed over the Abyssinians, two years after the birth of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, delegations of the Arabs and their poets came to congratulate and praise him, recounting his valorous deeds. Among those who came was a delegation from Quraysh comprising ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim, Umayyah ibn ʿAbd Shams, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Judʿān, and Khuwaylid ibn Asad.”