in you—but there will be no child-bearing.
Lakiṭ said: I then asked, “What is the furthest limit we shall reach and the final point to which we shall arrive?” The Prophet ﷺ gave no reply. I continued, “O Messenger of Allah, upon what shall I pledge my allegiance to you?”
He stretched out his hand and said, “On establishing the prayer, paying the zakāt, renouncing idolatry, and that you associate no other deity with Allah.”
I said, “And shall we have control over all that lies between East and West?” The Prophet ﷺ withdrew his hand, thinking I was stipulating something he could not grant. So I clarified, “We only wish to be free to settle wherever we please, and that no one bear the burden of another’s wrongdoing.”
He then extended his hand again and said, “That is yours: settle wherever you wish, and no soul shall be held accountable for you but your own.”
We took our leave of him, and he added, “By the life of your Lord, these two are among the most God-fearing of people in this world and the next.”
Kaʿb ibn al-Khudariyyah, a man of the Banū Bakr ibn Kilāb, asked, “Who are they, O Messenger of Allah?” He replied, “The people of al-Muntafiq.” (Kaʿb said: So we departed, and I drew near to him.)
The narrator continued the ḥadīth until he said:
I asked, “O Messenger of Allah, is there any good for those who have already died during the Age of Ignorance?”
A man from the ranks of Quraysh interjected, “By Allah, your father al-Muntafiq is in the Fire!” It felt as though a burning coal had fallen between my skin and my flesh because of what he said about my father before all the people. I was about to say, “And your father, O Messenger of Allah?”—but I thought better of it and instead asked, “O Messenger of Allah, how about your family?”
He replied, “And my family—by Allah! Whenever you pass by the grave of any ʿĀmirī or Qurashī idolater, say: ‘Muhammad has sent me to you with news that will distress you: you will be dragged on your face and belly into the Fire.’”
I asked, “O Messenger of Allah, why has this befallen them when the only deeds they knew were those they practiced, and they supposed they were doing good?”
He said, “Because Allah sends—at the end of every seven nations—a prophet. Whoever disobeys his prophet is among the misguided, while whoever obeys his prophet is among the rightly guided.”
This ḥadīth is exceedingly strange, and some of its wording is objectionable. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Bayhaqī recorded it in al-Baʿth wa’l-Nushūr, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Ishbīlī in al-ʿĀqibah, and al-Qurṭubī in The Reminder on the States of the Hereafter. It will appear again in the book al-Baʿth wa’l-Nushūr, if Allah wills.