yet there will be no prophet after me; rather, there will be successors.” Reported by al-Bukhārī.
Jābir ibn Samurah related: “I saw the seal on the back of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ—it was like a pigeon’s egg.” Muslim collected this report.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar said in Fatḥ al-Bārī: “Al-Qurṭubī remarked that the sound hadiths unanimously state that the Seal of Prophethood was a protruding, reddish mark near his left shoulder. When described in smaller terms it was about the size of a pigeon’s egg, and when described in larger terms it filled the span of a clenched hand⦗1⦘. Allah knows best.”
The scholars added: the wisdom behind this is that the heart lies on that side.
Al-Suhaylī said: “The seal was placed beside his ﷺ shoulder because he is protected from Satan’s whispering, and that is the point from which Satan seeks entry.”
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr wrote: “It was out of Allah’s mercy toward His servants that He sent Muhammad ﷺ to them, and as an additional honor for them He sealed the line of messengers with him and perfected the upright religion through him. Allah has declared in His Book, and His Messenger ﷺ in the well-attested Sunnah, that there is no prophet after him, so that everyone may know that whoever lays claim to this rank after him is a lying impostor, a deceiving dajjāl, astray and leading others astray. Even if such a person indulges in raving, sleight-of-hand, or produces all sorts of magic, talismans, and conjuring, it is all nonsense and falsehood to people of sound intellect. Allah manifested this clearly through the corrupt deeds and feeble words of al-Aswad al-ʿAnsī in Yemen and Musaylimah the Liar in al-Yamāmah, so that every person of reason and discernment realized that they were both liars and deviants—may Allah curse them. The same applies to anyone who makes such a claim until the Day of Resurrection, the last of them being the Antichrist. With each of these impostors Allah brings about matters through which scholars and believers bear witness to the falsity of the claimant.
This, too, is part of Allah’s complete kindness to His creation, for such impostors, by the very nature of their condition, never command what is right or forbid what is wrong—except out of self-preservation, or