I heard Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān say, “I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, ‘Leave the Turks alone so long as they leave you alone.’ ” (1)

Al-Ṭabarānī also relates—in the book al-Malāḥim—through Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Ḥātim, from Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād, who said: Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-ʿAṭṭār and Abū al-Mughīrah narrated to us, from Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Dīnār, from Kaʿb al-Aḥbār, who said:

“The Turks will descend upon Āmid, and seventy thousand of them will drink from the Tigris and the Euphrates. They will range throughout al-Jazīrah while the Muslims, in al-Ḥīrah, will be unable to withstand them. Then Allah will send upon them snow, without measure, containing a biting wind and ice, and they will be extinguished.”

In another report from Kaʿb he said: “Allah will send a plague upon them, and only one man will escape.”

The point is that the Companions did fight the Turks: they defeated them, seized their spoils, and enslaved their women and children. Taken at face value, these ḥadiths indicate that fighting them is among the portents of the Hour, and such portents only appear shortly before it. Hence it is possible that another great clash will yet occur between the Muslims and the Turks, the last of which will be the emergence of Gog and Magog, as will be mentioned later. However, if the signs of the Hour are understood more broadly—as events that may occur at any time after the Prophet ﷺ, even long before the Hour—then what has already taken place would still qualify. This is what becomes apparent after examining all the ḥadiths in this chapter, as you will soon see, Allah willing.

We have already cited the reports concerning the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī at Karbalā during the days of Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah, as well as the ḥadiths that speak of the Umayyad caliphs—those “youths from Banū ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib.”

Aḥmad said: Rūḥ narrated to us; Abū Umayyah ʿAmr ibn Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ narrated to us; my grandfather Saʿīd ibn ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd informed me, from Abū Hurayrah, who said:

“I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, ‘The ruin of my community will be at the hands of immature youths.’ ”

Marwān—who was sitting with us in the circle before he held any office—remarked, “May the curse of Allah be upon those youths!”
Abū Hurayrah replied, “By Allah, had I wished to name the clans of so-and-so and so-and-so, I could have done so.”
He continued, “I used to accompany my father and grandfather to the Banū Marwān after they had taken power, and I would see them pledging allegiance to young boys—some of them still wrapped in swaddling cloths. Marwān would say to us, ‘Could it be that these companions of yours are the ones I heard Abū Hurayrah mention—that these kings resemble one another?’ ”

Al-Bukhārī narrated a similar report from Abū Hurayrah. (2)

There are, in truth, very many ḥadiths on this subject, and we have presented them in detail in Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah.

We have also mentioned earlier the ḥadith about the “liar” and the “destroyer” from Thaqīf (3): the “liar” is al-Mukhtār ibn Abī ʿUbayd, who arose in Kūfah during the time of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr. He was a vile Rāfiḍī, even accused of heresy, and claimed that revelation came to him; Muṣʿab ibn al-Zubayr killed him. As for the “destroyer,” he is al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf al-Thaqafī, who killed ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr. He was a harsh, tyrannical Nāṣibī—the very opposite of the first in his hostility toward the Shiʿah, as noted earlier.