…of the Kaʿbah, and large platters will be set before you morning and evening.”
They asked, “O Messenger of Allah, shall we be better on that day or today?”
He replied, “You are better today. Today you are brothers, whereas on that day some of you will be striking the necks of others.”
Sufyān al-Thawrī also narrated—through Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, from Abū Mūsā Yuḥannas—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
“When my community walks with an affected swagger, when Persia and Rome serve them, Allah will set them against one another.”
Al-Bayhaqī recorded this ḥadīth with a continuous chain through Mūsā ibn ʿUbaydah, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Dīnār, from Ibn ʿUmar, from the Prophet ﷺ.
Another ḥadīth:
Abū Dāwūd said: Sulaimān ibn Dāwūd al-Mahrī related to us; Ibn Wahb related to us; Saʿīd ibn Abī Ayyūb related to us, from Sharāḥīl ibn Yazīd al-Maʿāfirī, from Abū ʿAlqamah, from Abū Hurayrah—so far as I know—from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ:
“Indeed, Allah will raise up for this ummah, at the head of every hundred years, someone who will renew for it the matter of its religion.”
Abū Dāwūd added: It was also narrated by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Shurayḥ al-Iskandarānī, but he did not carry it past Sharāḥīl. Abū Dāwūd is alone in transmitting it with a full chain.
At the start of every century, each group of scholars has singled out one of their learned men as the renewer referred to in this ḥadīth. Other scholars, however, hold that the sounder view is that the prophetic saying embraces every individual scholar in those eras who fulfills the communal obligation of transmitting knowledge from the earlier generations to those who come after. This is supported by another report, transmitted through both connected and unconnected chains:
“This knowledge will be borne in every generation by its upright men, who will purge it of the distortions of the extremists and the fabrications of the liars.”
Such scholars continue to exist—praise and grace be to Allah—down to our own time; we are now in the eighth century. We ask Allah to grant us a good ending, to make us among His righteous servants and among the heirs of the Garden of bliss. Āmīn, Āmīn, Lord of all creation.