or half (6)—as has previously been stated:

“The people of Paradise will be one hundred and twenty ranks; this ummah will occupy eighty of those ranks.” (1)

In the Musnad, the Jāmiʿ of al-Tirmidhī, and the Sunan of Ibn Mājah it is related—through the chain of Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr, from Abū Salamah, from Abū Hurayrah, in a marfūʿ report:

“The poor among the Muslims will enter Paradise half a day before the wealthy, and that half-day equals five hundred years.” Its chain meets the conditions set by Muslim, and al-Tirmidhī declared it ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ. (2)

Al-Ṭabarānī likewise transmitted it through the isnād of al-Thawrī, from Muḥammad ibn Zayd, from Abū Ḥāzim, from Abū Hurayrah, with the same wording. (3)

Al-Tirmidhī also narrated it via al-Aʿmash, from ʿAṭiyyah, from Abū Saʿīd, in a marfūʿ report and graded it ḥasan. (4)

Muslim, however, recorded—through Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ḥubulī, from ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAmr—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

“The poor of the Emigrants will outstrip the wealthy on the Day of Resurrection in reaching Paradise by forty years.” (5)

Al-Tirmidhī narrated the same from Jābir ibn ʿAbdullāh, declared it ṣaḥīḥ (6); he also reported a similar ḥadīth from Anas, though he regarded it as gharīb. (7)

I say: If the first narration is authentic, it concerns the entry of the very first of the poor and the very last of the rich. The forty years, then, applies to the entry of the last among the poor and the first among the rich. Allah knows best.

Imām Aḥmad transmitted—through Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUlayyah—and Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah (8) transmitted—through Yazīd ibn Hārūn; both from Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī, from Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr, from ʿĀmir al-ʿUqaylī, from his father, from Abū Hurayrah—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

“The first three of my ummah who will enter Paradise were presented to me, and the first three who will enter the Fire…” and he related the remainder of the ḥadīth as mentioned a little earlier.