“Will it be cut short?”
He answered, “Indeed, it will be cut short.”
The king asked, “And who will bring it to an end?”
He replied, “A pure Prophet to whom revelation will come from the Most High.”
The king said, “From whose lineage will this Prophet arise?”
He replied, “From the descendants of Ghalib son of Fihr son of Mālik son of al-Naḍr; kingship shall remain among his people until the end of time.”
The king said, “Does time have an end?”
He replied, “Yes—on a Day (1) when the first and the last will all be assembled, the virtuous will rejoice and the wicked will be doomed.”
The king asked, “Is what you tell me true?”
He said, “Yes—by the glow of dusk, the darkness of night, and the dawn when its light is perfectly joined, what I have told you is the truth.”
Then Shiq arrived, and the king addressed him exactly as he had addressed Saṭīḥ, concealing from him what Saṭīḥ had said in order to see whether their answers would agree or differ. (2)
Shiq declared:
“Yes, you beheld a flaming mass emerging from darkness; it fell between a meadow and a hillock and consumed every living soul.”
When he said this, the king realized that the two soothsayers agreed and that their words were one, except that Saṭīḥ had said, “It fell upon the land of Tihāmah and consumed every creature possessed of a skull,” whereas Shiq had said, “It fell between a meadow and a hillock and consumed every living soul.”
The king said to him, “You have missed nothing, O Shiq; what, then, is your interpretation?”
He answered, “I swear by every human who dwells between the two lava fields: surely the Abyssinians will descend upon your land, they will overpower every delicate-fingered maiden, and they will rule everything from Abyan to Najrān.
The king exclaimed, “By your father, O Shiq, this is grievous and painful to us! When will it happen—during my lifetime or afterwards?”
He said, “Not during your lifetime, but some time after it. Then a great man of high rank will rescue you from them and will make them taste the harshest humiliation.”
The king asked, “Who is this man of great rank?”
He replied, “A youth—neither bulky nor slight (3)—who will rise against them (4) from the house of Dhū Yazan.”
The king asked, “Will his sovereignty last, or will it be cut short?”
He said, “Rather, it will be cut short (5) by a Messenger who will be sent with truth and justice, among people of faith and virtue (6); kingship will remain among his people until the Day of Decision.”
The king asked, “And what is the Day of Decision?”
He answered, “It is the Day on which rulers will be requited; calls will ring out from the heavens, audible to both the living and the dead; mankind will be gathered for the appointed time, and on that Day those who feared God will attain victory and abundant good.”
The king said, “Is what you have said true?”
He replied, “Yes, by the Lord of heaven and earth and of everything high and low between them—what I have told you is the truth (7) without any flaw.”
Ibn Isḥāq says: What the two soothsayers had foretold settled in the heart (8) of Rabiʿah ibn Naṣr, so he dispatched his sons and the members of his household to Iraq with