Then Wāʾil will lay claim to the caliphate, whereupon Nizār will flare with anger. Slaves and riff-raff will be brought close, while paragons and worthy men are pushed aside. Prices will soar in the very “Safar of Safars,” and every tyrant will be put in chains. They will march toward trenches and waterways thick with reeds and trees, yet the rivers will bar their advance. He will rout them at the break of day; the righteous will come to the fore, and neither sleep nor repose will avail them, until he enters one of the cities—there destiny will overtake him.
After that the archers will arrive; infantry will be cut down, champions slain, defenders taken captive, and the misguided destroyed. There, at the crest of the waters, the end will reach him. Religion will then languish, affairs be overturned, the Zabur denied, and bridges cut, so that none escapes save those on islands in the seas. The grain will fail, and the Bedouin will emerge—none of them to be faulted—against the people of sin and doubt, in a time of dire hardship. If only the people still possessed a sense of shame—yet what use are mere wishes?
They asked, “And what comes after that, O Satīḥ?”
He replied, “Then a man from Yemen—straight and taut like a well-rope—will appear, and by him God will sweep away every trial.”
This is an unusual report; we have recorded it because of its strangeness and the tribulations and battles it contains. We have already mentioned the story of Shiqq and Satīḥ with Rabīʿah ibn Naṣr, the king of Yemen, and how Satīḥ foretold the coming of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him. Likewise we have related Satīḥ’s encounter with his nephew ʿAbd al-Masīḥ, whom the king of the Sasanians sent after the palace quaked, the sacred fire was extinguished, and the Magian priest had his vision—all on the night when the one whose Law abrogated all other religions was born.
Chapter: How revelation began to the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, and the first portion of the Mighty Qur’an that was sent down to him
At that time he, peace and blessings be upon him, was forty years old. Ibn Jarīr has reported—on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās and Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib—that he was then forty-three.
Al-Bukhārī said: Yahyā ibn Bukayr narrated to us, from ʿUqayl, from Ibn Shihāb, from ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr, from ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her), who said:
“The first form in which revelation began to the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, was the righteous dream during sleep; every dream he saw came as clear as the break of dawn. Solitude was then made dear to him, and he would withdraw to the Cave of Ḥirāʾ, devoting himself to worship there for a succession of nights before returning to his family. He would take provisions for that, then go back to Khadījah and replenish his supplies.”