…Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb al-Quraẓī.

Abū Thābit said, “The two ‘Kāhin’ tribes are Qurayẓah and al-Naḍīr.”

Another mursal chain transmits the wording:

“From the two Kāhin tribes there will emerge a man who is the most knowledgeable of people with respect to the Book of Allah.” (1)

ʿAwn ibn ʿAbd Allāh likewise stated, “I have never seen anyone more versed in the interpretation of the Qur’an than Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb.” (2)

Announcement that his generation would pass away one hundred years from the very night he spoke—and events unfolded exactly as he foretold

It is established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, on the authority of al-Zuhrī, from Sālim and Abū Bakr ibn Sulaymān ibn Abī Khaythamah, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, who said:

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ led us in the ʿIshāʾ prayer one night during the last days of his life. When he had given the salām, he stood and said:

“Do you perceive this night of yours? At the completion of one hundred years from tonight, none of those who are alive on the surface of the earth today will remain.” (3)

Ibn ʿUmar remarked: People fell into confusion over the words of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and began repeating various reports about a span of one hundred years, whereas he only meant that that century would come to an end. In another narration: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ intended nothing but the passing of his generation.

Muslim also relates, through Ibn Jurayj, who said: Abū ’l-Zubayr informed me that he heard Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh say:

I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ one month before his death declare: “You ask me about the Hour, while its knowledge is with Allah alone. By Allah, none of the souls living on the face of the earth today will survive beyond one hundred years.” (4)

These aḥādīth and others like them are cited by the imams who hold that al-Khiḍr is not alive at present, as we mentioned earlier in his biography in Stories of the Prophets. They are explicit that every living being on earth would die within one hundred years of the Prophet’s statement ﷺ—and that is exactly what happened. We know of no Companion who outlived that period, nor anyone else.

Some scholars later attempted to extend this ruling to every subsequent century, but the ḥadīth itself gives no indication of that—Allah knows best.

[Another ḥadīth]

Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Wāqidī said: Shurayḥ ibn Yazīd narrated to me, from Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Ziyād al-Alhānī, from