that were awe-inspiring in their amplification of this astonishing calamity. He said: We now declare:

This section (1) sets forth the greatest event and the most colossal catastrophe—one to which days and nights (2) have given birth to no equal. It engulfed all created beings yet descended with particular severity upon the Muslims. Were someone to claim that, from the moment Allah created Adam until today, the world has never been tested by anything comparable, he would be telling the truth, for the chronicles contain nothing that even approaches it.

Among the gravest events historians cite is what Nebuchadnezzar did to the Children of Israel: slaughtering them and destroying the Sacred House. But what is the Sacred House compared with the cities these accursed people have ruined—each city many times larger than the Sacred House—and what are the Children of Israel (3) compared with those they killed? Indeed, the inhabitants of a single city whom they massacred outnumber the entire Children of Israel.

It is unlikely that mankind (4) will witness the like of this calamity again until the world perishes and the earth comes to an end, save for the havoc of Gog and Magog. As for the Antichrist, he will spare those who follow him and destroy those who oppose him; these people spared no one at all. They slew women, men, and children (5), ripped open the wombs of pregnant women, and murdered the unborn.

“To Allah we belong and to Him we return; there is no power and no strength except with Allah, the Most High, the Almighty.” Such words are all one can utter in the face of this disaster whose sparks have flown far and whose harm has become universal (6), sweeping across the lands like a cloud driven before the wind.

A people emerged from the borders of China and marched against the territories of Turkistan—such as Kashgar and Balasaghun—then advanced to Transoxiana, including Samarqand, Bukhara, and other cities; they seized them and wrought upon their inhabitants what we shall relate. A detachment of them (7) then crossed into Khurasan, leaving it utterly spent through conquest, devastation, killing, and plunder; after that they pushed on beyond it (8) to Rayy, Hamadan, and the region of Jibal (9) with all its towns up to the borders of Iraq. Next they turned upon Azerbaijan and Arran (10), ravaged them (11), and killed most of their inhabitants (12), so that none escaped them (13) save a rare fugitive—all in less than a single year. This—unless