During the night a horseman suddenly appeared, suspended between heaven and earth, calling out:
“Sleepers, awake! This is no time for slumber. Aḥmad has arisen, and the jinn have been driven far, far away.”
Startled, we—an entire band of young companions—had all heard the cry. We hurried back to our people and found them speaking of a dispute that had flared up in Mecca among Quraysh over a prophet who had emerged from among them, from the clan of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, whose name is Aḥmad. Abū Nuʿaym recorded this report.
Al-Kharāʾiṭī also relates: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Balawī in Egypt told us; ʿUmārah ibn Zayd narrated to us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ʿAlāʾ transmitted to me; Yaḥyā ibn ʿUrwah reported from his father that a group of Quraysh—among them Waraqah ibn Nawfal ibn Asad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā ibn Quṣayy, Zayd ibn ʿAmr ibn Nufayl, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Jahsh ibn Riʾāb, and ʿUthmān ibn al-Ḥuwayrith—were gathered before an idol of theirs. They had made that day of every year a festival: they honored the idol, slaughtered a camel for it, then ate, drank wine, and kept vigil around it. Late that night they entered the shrine and found the idol lying face-down. Alarmed, they set it upright, but it soon toppled violently. They raised it again, only for it to fall a second time, and then a third. Deeply troubled, they wondered at the cause.
ʿUthmān ibn al-Ḥuwayrith said, “Why does it keep overturning? Something extraordinary has happened!”—and it was the very night the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, was born. ʿUthmān then recited:
O idol of the feast, around whom chieftains gather,
Delegates from afar and from near,
You have fallen, overcome; tell us, why?
Was it a fool’s prank, or have you fallen in reproof?
If through some sin of ours, we confess and repent;
If you are vanquished and lie there humbled,
Then among the idols you are no sovereign lord.
They lifted the idol and set it upright once more. When it stood firm, a powerful voice rang out from within it, saying:
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