The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

“The nations were displayed before me. I saw a prophet pass by with an entire community; another prophet with only a handful; another with ten; another with five; and another prophet walking alone. Then I looked again and beheld a vast multitude.

I asked, ‘O Gabriel, are these my community?’

He replied, ‘No. But look to the horizon.’ I looked, and there was yet another enormous throng.

He said, ‘These are your community, and at their forefront are seventy thousand who will neither be taken to account nor punished.’

I asked, ‘Why is that?’

He answered, ‘They did not cauterize themselves, they did not seek ruqyah (healing incantations), they did not take omens, and they trusted in their Lord.’”

ʿUkāshah ibn Miḥṣan rose and said, “Pray to Allah that He make me one of them.” He replied, “O Allah, make him one of them.”

Then another man stood up and said, “Pray to Allah that He make me one of them.” He said, “ʿUkāshah has beaten you to it.”

Muslim transmitted this through Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr, from Hushaym, with similar wording—his version being longer than the above. Al-Bukhārī and Muslim also recorded it through Yūnus, from al-Zuhrī, from Saʿīd, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Prophet ﷺ with comparable wording, and in it is stated: A man from the Anṣār then stood up and said, “Pray to Allah that He make me one of them.” He replied, “ʿUkāshah has beaten you to it.” (1)

Imām Aḥmad said: Yaḥyā ibn Abī Bukayr narrated to us; Zuhayr ibn Muḥammad narrated to us, from Suhayl ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ, from his father, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, who said:

“I asked my Lord—Exalted is He—and He promised me that He would admit into Paradise from my community seventy thousand whose faces will be like the full moon on the night it is complete. I asked for more, and He added, with every thousand, another seventy thousand. I said, ‘My Lord, what if these are not from the Emigrants of my community?’ He replied, ‘Then I shall complete their number for you from among the desert Arabs.’” (2)

Aḥmad also said: Yazīd narrated to us; Ismāʿīl narrated to us, from Ziyād al-Makhzūmī, from Abū Hurayrah, who said that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared:

“We are the last in this world yet the foremost on the Day of Resurrection. The first group of my community to enter Paradise will be seventy thousand who will face no reckoning; each man’s face will shine like the full moon. Those who follow them will gleam with the brightness of the most radiant star in the sky, and thereafter their ranks will descend accordingly.”

Aḥmad then related it through Ḥasan, from Ibn Luhayʿah, from Abū Yūnus Sulaym ibn Jubayr, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Prophet ﷺ with wording similar to the above. He likewise reported it through Ibn Mahdī, from Ḥammād ibn Salamah, from Muḥammad ibn Ziyād, from Abū Hurayrah, and in that version the mention of ʿUkāshah appears (3).

Al-Ṭabarānī also recorded it in the narration of Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh, from Muḥammad ibn Ziyād, from Abū Umāmah, as will be cited later (4).