in submission to His word, as though it were a chain dragged across a smooth rock. Then, when fear is removed from their hearts, they say, “What did your Lord say?” They say to the one who spoke, “The truth; and He is the Most High, the Most Great.”

Those who steal a hearing overhear it, and they are thus, one above another”—Sufyan illustrated this with his hand, tilting it and spreading his fingers apart—“so one of them hears the word and passes it down to the one beneath him; then the other passes it down to the one beneath him, until he casts it upon the tongue of a sorcerer or a soothsayer. A flaming meteor may strike him before he passes it on, or he may pass it on before it strikes him. He then adds a hundred lies to it, and it is said, ‘Did he not tell us on such-and-such a day that such-and-such would happen?’ Thus he is believed because of that word which was heard from heaven.” (2)

Abd al-Wahid al-Mulayhi informed us; Ahmad ibn Abd Allah al-Nuaymi informed us; Muhammad ibn Yusuf informed us; Muhammad ibn Ismail narrated to us; Muhammad ibn Abi Maryam narrated to us; al-Layth narrated to us; Ibn Jafar narrated to us, from Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman, from Urwah ibn al-Zubayr, from Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her, the wife of the Prophet, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, who said that she heard the Prophet, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, say:

“Indeed, the angels descend in the clouds, and they mention the matter decreed in heaven. The devils then steal a hearing and hear it, and convey it to the soothsayers, who add to it a hundred lies of their own.” (3)

Know that this was not apparent before the mission of the Prophet, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, and no Arab poet mentioned it before his time. Rather, it appeared at the beginning of his mission, and it was a foundation for his prophethood, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him. (4)

Yaqub ibn Utbah ibn al-Mughirah ibn al-Akhnas ibn Shurayq said: “The first people alarmed by the shooting of stars were this clan of Thaqif. They came to a man among them called Amr ibn Umayyah, of the Banu Ilaj, who was the most knowledgeable guide among the Arabs, and said to him, ‘Have you not seen what has occurred in the sky in the shooting of stars?’ He said, ‘Yes. Look, then: if the recognizable stars by which people find their way on land and at sea, and by which the seasonal conditions of summer and winter are known for what benefits people in their livelihoods, are the ones being shot, then, by Allah, it is the folding up of the world and the destruction of all creatures within it. But if they are’