to Madinah.’ Thereupon he said:

“Hasten on to Madinah and to the women; yet know that they will one day abandon it when it is in its finest state.”

He then added:

“Would that I knew when a fire will break out in Yemen, from Mount al-Warrāq, whose glow will light up the necks of the camels as they kneel in Busra as brightly as broad daylight.”

This chain of transmission is sound (1), although some narrators seem to have conflated two different events. The fire that will erupt from the depths of ʿAdan in Yemen is the one that will drive the people living at the end of time to the place of Gathering, whereas the fire whose radiance shines upon the camels’ necks is the one that will burst forth in the land of the Prophetic City, as explained earlier.

Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Shāmah—foremost ḥadith scholar of his day and leading historian of his age—recorded that in the year 654 AH, on Friday the 5th of Jumādā al-Ākhirah, a fire appeared in the land of Madinah, in one of its valleys. It stretched four farsakhs in length and four miles in width, liquefying stone until it flowed like molten copper and then cooled into jet-black charcoal. By its light people could travel at night all the way to Taymāʾ. The blaze lasted an entire month. The inhabitants of Madinah documented the event and even composed poetry about it; we have cited those verses earlier.

Chief Judge Ṣadr al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Abī al-Qāsim al-Ḥanafī, the qāḍī of Damascus, told me on the authority of his father, Shaykh Ṣafī al-Dīn—ḥanafī teacher in Busra—that several Bedouins who were camped near Busra on the morning after that night affirmed that they could see the necks of their camels by the light of that very fire which had erupted in the land of the Ḥijāz. We have already detailed this occurrence under the events of 654 AH, and that suffices us from repeating it here.

[Report of the Prophet ﷺ foretelling future events beyond our own era]

Imam Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (may Allah have mercy on him) said: Abū ʿĀṣim narrated to us; ʿAzrah ibn Thābit narrated to us; ʿIlbāʾ ibn Aḥmar al-Yashkurī narrated to us; Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī narrated to us:

“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ led us in the dawn prayer. He then ascended the pulpit and addressed us until the time for the noon prayer came. He descended, prayed the noon prayer, ascended the pulpit again and spoke to us until the time for the afternoon prayer came. He descended, prayed the afternoon prayer, ascended the pulpit once more and continued to address us until the sun set. He informed us of what had been and what will be, and the one among us with the most knowledge is the one who remembers it best.”

Muslim alone transmitted this ḥadith in the Book of Tribulations of his Ṣaḥīḥ, through Yaʿqūb ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dawraqī and Ḥajjāj ibn al-Shāʿir, from Abū ʿĀṣim al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Makhlad al-Nabīl, from ʿAzrah, from ʿIlbāʾ, from Abū Zayd—namely ʿAmr ibn Akhṭab ibn Rafāʿah al-Anṣārī—with this wording (4).

Al-Bukhārī stated in the Book of the Beginning of Creation of his Ṣaḥīḥ: “It is related from ʿĪsā ibn Mūsā Ghunjār, from …”