his bare report alone—how compelling, then, when all the other proofs combine to confirm the truth of what he related?

Second: He himself treated this very announcement as one of the greatest proofs of his veracity and the soundness of his prophethood. Such a claim could proceed only from someone utterly confident and absolutely certain of its truth.

Third: Those among the rabbis and monks who chose truth over falsehood believed him in this matter and testified to the accuracy of his words.

Fourth: The deniers and rejecters of his prophethood could not dispute that their scriptures foretold a prophet of towering stature whose qualities, community, place of emergence, and affairs were precisely described. They merely refused to acknowledge that he was the one intended, insisting instead that the prophecy referred to some other messenger. Both they and the believers among their own people knew full well that this was sheer obstinacy and brazen falsehood.

Fifth: Many of them admitted privately to their close circle that he was indeed that very prophet, yet resolved to oppose him for as long as they lived—as has already been mentioned.

Sixth: His ﷺ statement that he is mentioned in their scriptures is but one example of the many things he told them about what those books contain: the stories of their prophets and peoples, the events that befell them, the narratives of earlier communities, matters of origin and return, and much else that the earlier prophets had foretold.

All of this they recognized as true and fully consistent with what they themselves possessed. These reports are too numerous to count, and never once did they accuse him of falsehood in any of them. On the contrary, they were more eager than anyone to seize upon a single lie, slip, or oversight, so that they could broadcast it against him and thereby turn people away from him; yet they never