until the revelation is dispatched.

When it descends they say to one another, “What has your Lord said?”
• If the matter concerns the heavens they reply, “He has spoken the truth, for He is the Most High, the Most Great.”
• But if it pertains to the earth—some unseen affair, a death, or any other terrestrial event—they talk about it and say, “Such-and-such will take place.” The devils overhear this and convey it to their human confederates.

When the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ was sent, however, they were repulsed by shooting stars. The first to notice this were the people of Thaqīf. A shepherd among them would go to his flock and slaughter a sheep every day, while a camel-owner would sacrifice a camel each day, and the people began to squander their wealth. They said to one another, “Stop!—if these are the fixed stars by which we navigate, then it means humanity’s end; otherwise, something new has occurred.” They looked and found that the guiding stars were exactly as they had always been—none of them had vanished—so they desisted. Allah turned the jinn away, and they heard the Qur’an. When they arrived at its recitation they said, “Listen in silence.”

The devils then hurried to Iblīs and told him. He said, “A momentous event has taken place on earth. Bring me soil from every land.” They brought him samples, and when the soil of Tihāmah was produced he said, “Here is where the event has occurred.” (This was related by al-Bayhaqī and al-Ḥākim through Ḥammād ibn Salamah, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib.)

Al-Wāqidī reports:
Usāmah ibn Zayd ibn Aslam narrated to me from ʿAmr ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAbsī, from Kaʿb, who said:
“From the ascension of Jesus until the Prophet ﷺ was commissioned, no stars had been hurled down. When he was appointed, they were hurled. Quraysh witnessed a phenomenon they had never seen before; they began setting their livestock free and manumitting their slaves, thinking that annihilation had arrived. News of Quraysh’s actions reached the people of al-Ṭāʾif, so Thaqīf did the same. This reached ʿAbd Yā Layl ibn ʿAmr, who asked, ‘Why are you doing what I see?’ They replied, ‘The stars have been hurled; we saw them falling from the sky.’ He said, ‘Recovering wealth after it is lost is hard. Do not be hasty; look. If they are familiar stars, then—according to us—it signals the extinction of mankind; but if they are unfamiliar, something unprecedented has occurred.’ They looked and found them unfamiliar, and informed him. He said, ‘There is still a respite; this accompanies the appearance of a Prophet.’ Not long afterwards Abū Sufyān ibn Ḥarb arrived to tend his property. ʿAbd Yā Layl met him and spoke about the shooting stars. Abū Sufyān said, ‘Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh has appeared, claiming to be a Messenger-Prophet.’ ʿAbd Yā Layl replied, ‘Then it was for this that the stars were hurled.’

Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr likewise transmits—through Khālid, from Ḥuṣayn, from ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbī—who said: “Formerly, the stars were never hurled …”