fear Allah and act justly.” Muʿāwiyah said, “Ever since that day I have been certain that I would be tested with some responsibility because of the statement of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ (1).

Among the supporting narrations is the ḥadīth of Rāshid ibn Saʿd. On Muʿāwiyah’s authority it is related that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “If you set out to expose people’s hidden faults, you will corrupt them.” Abū al-Dardāʾ commented, “It was a single word Muʿāwiyah heard from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and Allah caused it to benefit him” (2).

Al-Bayhaqī also transmits, through the chain of Hushaym ⟶ al-ʿAwwām ibn Ḥawshab ⟶ Sulaymān ibn Abī Sulaymān ⟶ his father ⟶ Abū Hurayrah, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “The caliphate will be in Medina, and kingship in Syria.” This report is extremely solitary (gharīb).

He further narrates, by way of Abū Idrīs from Abū al-Dardāʾ, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “While I was asleep I saw the [pillar] (3) of the Book lifted from beneath my head. I thought it was being taken away, so I followed it with my eyes and saw that it was set down in Syria. Be aware that, when turmoil breaks out, faith will be in Syria” (4).

This was also reported by Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz from ʿAṭiyyah ibn Qays, from Yūnus ibn Maysarah, from ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAmr; and by al-Walīd ibn Muslim from ʿUfayr ibn Maʿdān, from Sulaymān ibn ʿĀmir, from Abū Umāmah.

Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān likewise relates—from Naṣr ibn Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Sulamī al-Ḥimṣī, from his father, from ʿAbdullāh ibn Abī Qays—that he heard ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb say: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared, “I saw a column of light emerge from beneath my head, gleaming until it came to rest in Syria.”

ʿAbd al-Razzāq reports—through Maʿmar, from al-Zuhrī, from ʿAbdullāh ibn Ṣafwān—that on the day of Ṣiffīn a man exclaimed, “O Allah, curse the people of Syria!” ʿAlī replied, “Do not revile the people of Syria—[so great a multitude] (11), for among them are the abdāl (the righteous replacements), for among them are the abdāl, for among them are the abdāl” (12).