…the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “I shall precede you to the Basin; I will wait there for those of you who come to me. Let me not find myself disputing with any one of you, saying, ‘He belongs to my community,’ only to be told, ‘Do you know what they introduced after you?’”

Abū ’l-Dardāʾ said: “I became afraid that I might be among them, so I went to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and mentioned this to him, and he replied, ‘You are not one of them.’”

Abū ’l-Dardāʾ therefore died before ʿUthmān was killed and before the tribulations erupted.

Al-Bayhaqī said: This wording is also related by Yazīd ibn Abī Maryam from Abū ʿUbayd Allāh Muslim ibn Mishkam (1), from Abū ’l-Dardāʾ, up to his words, “You are not one of them” (2).

I say: Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz held that Abū ’l-Dardāʾ died two years before the end of ʿUthmān’s caliphate, while al-Wāqidī, Abū ʿUbayd, and others said that he died in 32 AH (3).

His ﷺ forewarning of the tribulations that would occur toward the end of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān’s rule and during the caliphate of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib—may Allah be pleased with them both

It is recorded in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, through Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, from al-Zuhrī, from ʿUrwah, from Usāmah ibn Zayd, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ once mounted one of the watch-towers of Madinah and said, “Do you see what I see? I behold the places where trials will fall among your houses like the falling of raindrops.” (4)

Imām Aḥmad and Muslim likewise report—through al-Zuhrī, from Abū Idrīs al-Khawlānī—that I heard Ḥudhayfah ibn al-Yamān say: “By Allah, I know more than anyone else of every tribulation that is to occur between me and the Hour. That is not because the Messenger of Allah ﷺ confided to me something he withheld from others; rather, while addressing a gathering in which I was present, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was asked about the trials, and as he enumerated them he said: ‘Among them are three that will leave nothing untouched; they will sweep through like the summer winds—some are minor and some are major.’” Ḥudhayfah added, “All of those companions have passed away except me.” This is the wording given by Aḥmad (5).

Al-Bayhaqī said: Ḥudhayfah died after the first turmoil—the murder of ʿUthmān—and before the other two that occurred in the time of ʿAlī (6).

I say: al-ʿIjlī and a number of the historians stated that Ḥudhayfah’s death came forty— after the killing of ʿUthmān.