the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. They said, “Ask him about the Spirit; about peoples who vanished in the distant past and whose fate is unknown; and about a man who journeyed throughout the earth, reaching its eastern and western horizons.” When the envoys returned, they put these questions to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, whereupon Allah revealed: “They ask you about the Spirit. Say: The Spirit is from the command of my Lord, and you have been given but little knowledge.” (al-Isrāʾ 17:85).
He also sent down Sūrat al-Kahf, in which He explains the story of the youths who left the religion of their people, believed in Allah—the Almighty, the Praiseworthy—devoted their worship solely to Him, withdrew from their folk, and took shelter in a cave. There they slept, and Allah awakened them after three hundred and nine years; their affair unfolded exactly as Allah has narrated to us in His Noble Book. He then related the tale of the two men, one a believer and the other a disbeliever, and what transpired between them. Next He mentioned the story of Moses and al-Khiḍr and the rulings and admonitions that occurred during their journey.
Then He said: “They ask you about Dhū l-Qarnayn. Say: I shall recite to you something of his story.” (al-Kahf 18:83). He went on to clarify it, recounting what Dhū l-Qarnayn reached of the Easts and Wests and the beneficial works he carried out in the world. This report conforms exactly to reality; whatever in the scriptures possessed by the People of the Book agrees with it is true, whereas whatever has been distorted or altered is rejected. Allah sent Muḥammad with the truth and revealed the Book to him so that he might make clear to people the matters over which they differed, whether narratives or rulings. After mentioning the Torah and the Gospel, Allah the Exalted says: “And We have sent down to you the Book in truth, confirming the Scripture that came before it and as a guardian over it.” (al-Māʾidah 5:48).
We have already, at the beginning of the account of the Hijrah, narrated the story of ʿAbdullāh ibn Salām’s conversion to Islam. He said, “When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came to Madinah, the people rushed toward him, and I was among those who hurried. When I saw his face I knew (1) it was not the face of a liar. The first words I heard him say were:
‘O people! Spread peace, maintain kinship ties, feed others, and pray at night while people are asleep—you will enter Paradise in peace.’ (2)”
It is established in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and elsewhere, through the narration of Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAṭiyyah and others, from Ḥumayd, from Anas, the story of how he asked the Messenger of Allah ﷺ about three things that only a prophet could know: “What is the first of the portents of the Hour? What will be the first food the people of Paradise will eat? And why does a child sometimes resemble his father and sometimes his mother?” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ replied:
“Gabriel has just informed me of them. As for the first of the portents of the Hour, it is a fire that will gather the people from the East to the West. The first food the people of Paradise will eat will be the caudate lobe of the fish’s liver. As for the child, if the man’s fluid precedes the woman’s, the child will resemble his father; and if the woman’s fluid precedes the man’s, the child will resemble his mother.” (3)