and in Him alone is help sought) were Anas ibn Malik, Jabir ibn ʿAbd Allah, Rafiʿ ibn ʿAmr al-Ghifari, and Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas,
(Abu Saʿid Saʿd ibn Malik ibn Sinan al-Ansari, Sahl ibn Hunayf, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAbbas, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar, and ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAmr),
as well as ʿAbd Allah ibn Masʿud, Abu Dharr, and ʿAʾishah—the Mother of the Believers—may Allah be pleased with them all (1).

We have already presented the hadith of ʿAli with its various chains, for he is one of the Four Caliphs, one of the Ten promised Paradise, and the central figure in this account. After it, we now mention the hadith of Ibn Masʿud, because he passed away before the Khawarij uprising.

Hadith Two
(from Ibn Masʿud, may Allah be pleased with him)

Imam Ahmad (2) said: “Yahya ibn Abi Bukayr narrated to us; Abu Bakr ibn ʿAyyash narrated to us, from ʿAsim, from Zirr, from ʿAbd Allah, who said that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

‘Toward the end of time a people will emerge: weak-witted, youthful—or he said: young in years. They will quote the finest speech of mankind and will recite the Quran with their tongues, yet it will not go beyond their throats. They will dart out of Islam just as an arrow passes cleanly through its game. Whoever meets them, let him kill them, for killing them carries a great reward with Allah for the one who does so.’”

Al-Tirmidhi (3) also related it through Abu Gharib, and Ibn Majah (4) recorded it through Abu Bakr ibn Abi Shaybah and ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAmir ibn Zurarah, all of them reporting from Abu Bakr ibn ʿAyyash. Al-Tirmidhi said: “This hadith is ḥasan ṣaḥiḥ (good and sound).”

Ibn Masʿud died roughly five years before the appearance of the Khawarij, so his report on this matter is transmitted through one of the strongest chains (5).

Hadith Three — from Anas ibn Malik

Imam Ahmad (6) said: “Ismaʿil narrated to us; Sulayman al-Taymi narrated to us; Anas narrated to us, saying: ‘It was related to me that the Prophet ﷺ said—though I did not hear it directly from him—

“Among you are a people (7) who worship and persevere (8) until people are amazed by them and they become amazed at themselves; yet they will shoot out of the religion just as an arrow shoots out of its prey.”’”