with slightly spaced incisors and a clearly visible tuft of hair beneath the lower lip. His neck looked like a pitcher of silver, and it was as though gold flowed through the hollows above his collar-bones. From the top of his chest to his navel ran a thin line of hair, straight like a rod; apart from that, no hair covered his chest or stomach. His palms and soles were broad and strong. When he turned, he turned with his whole body, and when he walked it seemed as if he were pulling his feet from solid rock and descending a slope. The sweat on his face glistened like pearls, and the scent of musk emanated from him. No one like him had ever been seen before, nor would anyone like him be seen afterward.

He was of handsome stature and pleasant fragrance, a husband of women yet with few offspring. All his progeny would come through a blessed woman who owns, in Paradise, a house of hollow pearls in which there is neither toil nor clamor. You, O Jesus, will care for him at the end of time just as Zechariah cared for your mother. From that woman he will have two cherished sons who will fall as martyrs, and with Me he enjoys a rank granted to none of mankind. His speech is the Qur’an, his religion is Islam, and I am Peace. Blessed is the one who reaches his era, witnesses his days, and hears his words.

Jesus said, “My Lord, what is this blessedness (ṭūbā)?”

He replied, “It is the planting of a tree that I have planted with My own Hand. It shelters all the Gardens of Paradise. Its root is in Riḍwān, its water from Tasnīm, its coolness like camphor, its taste like ginger, and its fragrance like musk. Whoever drinks a single draught from it will never thirst again.”

Jesus said, “My Lord, give me to drink from it.”

He answered, “It is forbidden to the prophets to drink from it until that Prophet drinks, and forbidden to the nations until the nation of that Prophet drinks.”

He continued, “O Jesus, I shall raise you to Myself.”

Jesus asked, “My Lord, why will You raise me?”

He said, “I shall raise you and then send you back at the end of time so that you may witness the marvels shown by that Prophet’s community and help them in fighting the accursed Antichrist. I shall cause you to descend at the time of prayer, but you will not lead them, for they are a community shown mercy and there is no prophet after their Prophet.”

Hishām ibn ʿAmmār reported, through al-Walīd ibn Muslim, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yazīd, and his father, that Jesus said, “My Lord, inform me about this blessed community.”

He said, “It is the community of Aḥmad: scholars, sages—almost like prophets themselves. They are content with little of My bounty, and I am content with little of their deeds; I shall admit them into Paradise with the words ‘There is no deity but Allah.’ O Jesus, they are more…"