It is also related in another ḥadīth that, sometime thereafter, Musaylimah wrote to the Prophet ﷺ:

“In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. From Musaylimah, the Messenger of Allah, to Muḥammad, the Messenger of Allah. Peace be upon you. To proceed: I have been made your partner in this matter. The land of the mud-brick dwellers is yours, and the land of the tent-dwellers is mine. Yet Quraysh are a people who overstep the bounds.”

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ replied:

“In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. From Muḥammad, the Messenger of Allah, to Musaylimah the Liar. Peace be upon whoever follows the guidance. To continue: the earth belongs to Allah; He causes it to be inherited by whomsoever of His servants He wills, and the good end is for the God-fearing.” (1)

Allah did indeed grant the final victory to Muḥammad and his Companions, for they alone were the God-fearing, the just, the believers—none besides them.

Several aḥādīth transmitted through various chains from the Prophet ﷺ foretell the wave of apostasy that broke out during the caliphate of al-Ṣiddīq. Al-Ṣiddīq met them with the Muhammadan armies until they returned to Allah’s religion in throngs, and the sweet water of faith ran clear once more after it had turned brackish. Concerning this Allah the Exalted says:

“O you who believe, whoever of you turns back from his religion—Allah will soon bring forth a people whom He loves and who love Him: humble toward the believers, mighty against the disbelievers” (al-Māʾidah 5:54).

The commentators state that this verse refers to Abū Bakr and his Companions, may Allah be pleased with them.

The two Ṣaḥīḥs likewise relate—through ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbī, from Masrūq, from ʿĀʾishah—the account of the Prophet ﷺ privately confiding to his daughter Fāṭimah that Gabriel used to review the Qur’an with him once each year, but that he had reviewed it twice that year, which he took as a sign that his end was near. She wept, whereupon he told her that she would be the lady of the women of Paradise and the first of his household to join him (2); and events unfolded exactly as he had said.

Al-Bayhaqī remarks that scholars differ over how long Fāṭimah lived after the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: some say two months, others three, six, or eight. The soundest report, however, is that of al-Zuhrī—from ʿUrwah, from ʿĀʾishah—who said: “Fāṭimah lived for six months after the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.” Both al-Bukhārī and Muslim record this (3).

In his work The Proofs of Prophethood, under the chapter on the Prophet’s foretelling of future unseen matters, al-Bayhaqī also cites—on the joint authority of al-Bukhārī and Muslim—the narration of Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd, from his father, from Abū Salamah, from ʿĀʾishah, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

“In the communities before you there were inspired men (muhaddathūn); if there is any such person in my community, it is ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.” (4)