My father continued: I went out and came to the Jews of Banū Qurayẓa, and we began to talk about the Prophet. Al-Zubayr ibn Bāṭā said, “The red star has risen—a star that never appears except when a prophet is about to emerge and become manifest. No one remains to come but Aḥmad (1); this is the place of his migration.”

Abū Saʿīd added: When the Messenger of God arrived in Madinah, my father relayed this report to him, and the Prophet said, “Had al-Zubayr and his kinsmen among the Jewish leaders embraced Islam, every Jew would have followed them, for the others are merely their followers.” (2)

Al-Naḍr ibn Salamah said: Yaḥyā ibn Ibrāhīm narrated to us, from Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad, from his father, from ʿĀṣim ibn ʿUmar ibn Qatāda, from Maḥmūd ibn Labīd, from Muḥammad ibn Maslamah, who said: “There was only one Jew in the clan of ʿAbd al-Ashhal, a man called Yūshaʿ. While I was still a boy I heard him say, ‘The time is near for the appearance of a Prophet who will be sent from the direction of this House,’ and he pointed toward the Kaʿba. ‘Whoever lives to see him should believe in him.’ When the Messenger of God was finally sent, we accepted Islam while he was living among us, but Yūshaʿ refused out of envy and arrogance.” (3)

Al-Naḍr went on: ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn Saʿīd narrated to us, from Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿĀmirī, from Sulaym ibn Yasār, from ʿUmāra (4) ibn Khuzayma ibn Thābit, who said: “There was no man among the Aws or the Khazraj who described Muḥammad more fully than Abū ʿĀmir the Monk.”