Al-Tirmidhī has also transmitted—from Abu Hurayrah, declaring the report authentic (1), and from Abu Saʿid, rating it sound (2)—that the interval is “half a day, that is, five hundred years.” All of this has already been cited above.

I say: If this wording is reliably preserved, as al-Tirmidhī maintained, it may be understood to refer to the span between the entry of the first of the poor and the very last of the wealthy, whereas the forty autumns relate to the gap between the entry of the last of the poor and the first of the wealthy. Allah knows best.

Al-Qurṭubī alluded to the same point in al-Tadhkira, where he wrote: “That may vary according to the respective conditions of the poor and the rich,” which is precisely what we have just explained.

Section

Al-Zuhrī said: “The speech of the inhabitants of Paradise will be Arabic.”

Sufyān al-Thawrī said: “It has reached us that on the Day of Resurrection people will converse in Syriac; once they enter Paradise, they will speak Arabic.”

Section

As for a woman who, in this life, marries several husbands and then enters Paradise—whose wife will she be?

Al-Qurṭubī relates in al-Tadhkira, by way of Ibn Wahb from Mālik, that Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr once complained about her husband al-Zubayr to her father. He replied, “My daughter, be patient, for al-Zubayr is a righteous man, and it may well be that he will be your husband in Paradise.”

He added: “I have also heard that if a man is a woman’s first husband, he will be her spouse in Paradise.”

Abu Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī commented, “This is a strange ḥadīth.”

It has likewise been reported from Abu al-Dardāʾ and Ḥudhayfah ibn al-Yamān that a woman will belong to the last of her husbands in this world (3).

Another narration states that she will belong to the one who displayed the best character toward her.

Abu Bakr al-Najjād said: Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Shākir narrated to us; ʿUbayd ibn Isḥāq al-ʿAṭṭār narrated to us; Sinān ibn Hārūn narrated to us, from Ḥumayd, from Anas, that Umm Ḥabībah said, “O Messenger of Allah, a woman who has had two husbands…”