ʿAbd al-Razzāq said (1): Sufyān narrated to us, from Khālid al-Ḥadhdhāʾ, from Abū Qilābah, from Abū Asmāʾ, from Thawbān, who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared:
“Three men—each of them the son of a caliph—will fight one another at this your ḥarra (volcanic plain), yet the affair will not settle with any one of them. Then the [black] banners will advance from Khurasan and will kill you with a slaughter the like of which has never been seen—he then mentioned something else—so when that happens, go to him even if you must crawl over snow, for he is Allah’s Caliph, the Mahdi.”
Some transmitters related it from Thawbān but halted it with him; that is nearer to being correct (2), and Allah knows best.
Imām Aḥmad said (3): Yaḥyā ibn Ghīlān and Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd told me; they said: Rashdīn ibn Saʿd narrated to us. [Yaḥyā ibn Ghīlān, in his version, added:] Yūnus ibn Yazīd narrated to me, from Ibn Shihāb, from Qabīṣah—he is Ibn Dhūʾayb—from Abū Hurayrah, from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, that he said:
“Black banners will come forth from Khurasan; nothing will turn them back until they are planted in Iliyāʾ (Jerusalem).”
Al-Bayhaqī narrated it in al-Dalāʾil through Rashdīn ibn Saʿd al-Miṣrī (4), and he is weak. He then remarked: A report similar to this has been related from Kaʿb al-Aḥbār—and that is nearer to the mark. He further said: Through the route of Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān, a transmitter told us, from Abū al-Mughīrah ʿAbd al-Quddūs, from Ibn ʿAbbās, reporting it from Kaʿb as well, who said:
“Black banners will appear for the sons of al-ʿAbbās until they reach Syria, and Allah will slay every tyrant and every enemy of theirs at their hands.” (5)
Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Dīzīl narrated—from Ibn Abī Uways, from Ibn Abī Dhīb (6), from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿĀmirī, from Suhayl, from his father, from Abū Hurayrah—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said to al-ʿAbbās:
“Among you is Prophethood, and among you is kingship.” (7)
ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad related—from Ibn Maʿīn, from ʿUbayd ibn Abī Qurrah, from al-Layth, from Abū Qabīl, from