“And what will be the first food that the people of Paradise will eat? And how is it that a child comes to resemble¹ his father or his mother?”

He replied, “Gabriel has just informed me of these matters.”

“Gabriel?” he asked.

“Yes,” the Prophet said.

“He is the angel whom the Jews regard as their enemy.” He then recited: “Whoever is an enemy to Gabriel—it is he who has brought it down upon your heart by Allah’s permission” (al-Baqarah 2:97).

He continued, “As for the first of the portents of the Hour: a fire will rise among the people from the east and drive them toward the west. The first food the people of Paradise will eat is the extra lobe of a whale’s liver. When the man’s fluid precedes the woman’s, the child takes after him; but when the woman’s fluid precedes, she takes after her.²”

He thereupon declared, “I testify that there is no god but Allah and that you are the Messenger of Allah. O Messenger of Allah, the Jews are a slanderous people,³ and if they learn of my embracing Islam before you question them about me, they will malign me.”

The Jews then arrived, and he said,

“What kind of man is ʿAbd Allah among you?”

They replied, “He is the best of us and the son of the best of us, our leader and the son of our leader.”

He asked, “What would you say if he were to accept Islam?”

They said, “Allah protect him from that.”

ʿAbd Allah then emerged and declared, “I testify that there is no god but Allah and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”

They said, “He is the worst of us and the son of the worst of us,” and they disparaged him.

He said, “This is what I feared, O Messenger of Allah.”

Al-Bukhārī narrated it⁴ through ʿAbd Allah ibn Munīr from ʿAbd Allah ibn Bakr, and he also narrated it⁵ through Ḥāmid ibn ʿUmar from Bishr ibn al-Mufaḍḍal, from Ḥumayd.

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq⁶ said: ʿAbd Allah ibn Abī Bakr related to me, from Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd Allah, from a man of the family of ʿAbd Allah ibn Salām, that the story of ʿAbd Allah ibn Salām—who was a learned rabbi—when he embraced Islam went as follows:

“When I heard of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and recognized his description, his name, his features, and all that we had been awaiting of him,⁷ I kept it to myself and spoke to no one of it until the Messenger of Allah ﷺ arrived in Madinah. When he came, he stayed at Qubāʾ among the Banū ʿAmr ibn ʿAwf. A man came announcing his arrival while I was atop one of my date-palms, working there, and my aunt Khālida bint al-Ḥārith was sitting below. As soon as I heard the news of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ I proclaimed, ‘Allāhu akbar!’

My aunt, hearing my takbīr, said, ‘Had you heard of Moses son of ʿImrān, you would not have been any more exuberant!’ I replied, ‘O aunt, by Allah, he is the brother of Moses son of ʿImrān; he has been sent with the same religion with which Moses was sent.’

She asked, ‘My nephew, is he the one we were told would be raised just before the Hour?’ I answered, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘If that is so, then indeed it is he.’

I then went out to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and embraced Islam, after which I returned to my household, instructed them, and they too embraced Islam—though I kept the matter concealed