Al-Bayhaqī said:
Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Faḍl al-Qaṭṭān informed us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar informed us; Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān narrated to us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūsuf narrated to us; Yaḥyā ibn Ḥamzah narrated to us; and Abū ʿAlqamah—Naṣr ibn ʿAlqamah—transmitted the report, tracing it back to Jubayr ibn Nufayr. He said:
ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥawālah related: We were with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and complained to him of our nakedness, poverty and lack of provisions. He said:
“Rejoice! By Allah, it is abundance, not scarcity, that I fear for you. By Allah, this affair will remain among you until Allah grants you conquest of the land of Syria—or, he said: the land of Persia, the land of Rome, and the land of Ḥimyar—and until you become three armies: an army in Syria, an army in Iraq, and an army in Yemen; and until a man is given a hundred yet finds it unsatisfactory.”
Ibn Ḥawālah said: I asked, “O Messenger of Allah, who could withstand Syria when the Romans, those people of formidable strength, are there?”
He replied, “By Allah, Allah will most certainly grant you its conquest and will make you successors there, until a company of them—whose shirts are white and whose necks bear the marks of battle (1)—are standing before one of your own, a small black shaven man, and whatever he commands them they carry out …” and he continued with the rest of the narration.
Abū ʿAlqamah said: I heard ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī say: The Companions of the Messenger of Allah recognised the description in this ḥadīth in Jazʾ ibn Suhayl al-Sulamī (2), who in that period was placed over the non-Arab troops. Whenever they went to the mosque they would look at him and at those standing around him, marvelling at how precisely the description of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ fitted him and them (3).
Aḥmad said: Ḥajjāj narrated to us; al-Layth ibn Saʿd narrated to us; Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb (4) told me, from Rabīʿah ibn Laqīṭ al-Tujībī, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥawālah al-Azdī, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
“Whoever escapes three things has indeed been saved.”
(He repeated this three times.)
They asked, “What are they, O Messenger of Allah?”
He said, “My death, the murder of a Caliph who perseveres in justice and dispenses it, and the Antichrist (5).”
Aḥmad also said: Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm narrated to us; al-Jurayrī narrated to us, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Shaqīq, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥawālah, who said: I passed by the Messenger of Allah ﷺ while he was sitting in the shade of a doumah tree (7), and with him was a scribe to whom he was dictating (8)