ʿAlī said, “Then I fell silent.”

The rabbi asked me, “And what else?”

I replied, “That is all that comes to mind.”

The rabbi continued, “There is a reddish tinge in his eyes; his beard is handsome, his mouth fine, his ears perfectly formed; when he faces someone he does so with his whole body, and when he turns away he turns away with his whole body.”

I said, “By Allah, that is exactly his description.”

The rabbi asked, “Anything further? (1)”

I said, “What is it?”

He answered, “He has a slight forward stoop (2).”

I replied, “That is what I told you: it is as though he were coming down a slope.”

The rabbi said, “I find this very description in the scripture of my forefathers. We read that he will be sent in the Sanctuary of Allah, the place of His House and His security; then he will migrate to another sanctuary that he himself will declare sacred, and its sanctity will equal that of the sanctuary Allah has made sacred. We also find that the people who will aid him, to whom he will migrate, are a clan descended from ʿAmr ibn ʿĀmir, dwellers among palm-trees, and that the inhabitants of the land before them were Jews.”

ʿAlī said, “That is he indeed—the Messenger of Allah.”

The rabbi declared, “I bear witness that he is a Prophet, Allah’s Messenger to all people. Upon this I shall live, upon this I shall die, and upon this I shall be raised, if Allah wills.”

ʿAlī relates: “After that the rabbi used to come to me, teaching me the Qur’an and informing me of the rulings of Islam. Then ʿAlī and the rabbi left that place, and the rabbi remained a believer in the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, affirming him, until he died during the caliphate of Abū Bakr (3).”

This description has been transmitted from the Commander of the Believers, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, through several routes that will be mentioned later.

Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān said: “Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr related to us, Khalid ibn ʿAbd Allāh related to us, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, from his father, from his grandfather, who said: He was asked—or it was said to ʿAlī—‘Describe the Messenger of Allah for us.’ He replied, ‘He was of a radiant white complexion imbued with a rosy hue; his pupils were jet-black and his eyelashes long.’ (4)”

Yaʿqūb also said: “ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salamah and Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr narrated to us, saying: ʿĪsā ibn Yūnus related to us, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd Allāh, the freedman of Ghufrah, related to us, from Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad—a descendant of ʿAlī—who said: Whenever ʿAlī described the Messenger of Allah he would say, ‘His face was softly rounded; he was fair-skinned (5), large-eyed with deep black pupils, and his eyelashes were long.’ (6)