for the sake of Arabism, and for that reason they have still not been granted victory over them.

Victory over the Jews is an established reality affirmed by Islam; it is not a matter left to conjecture. The Hour will not arrive until what the truthful and trustworthy one—the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him—foretold comes to pass: the Muslims will fight the Jews, the Muslims will kill them, overcome them, and prevail over them, and a rock or a tree—things that do not normally speak—will call out, “O Muslim, here is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.”

Likewise, among the signs of the Hour that must inevitably occur is that the Euphrates—the well-known river at the far eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula—will recede and uncover a mountain of gold, or a treasure of gold. “Recede” here means that the gold will surface like a mountain. And everyone knows what gold is:

“I have seen that people have departed
To the one who holds the gold.”

Gold steals people’s reason. When that flowing river lays bare a mountain of gold—glory be to Allah—each person will fight the next, saying, “Perhaps I will be the one who escapes with it,” battling solely to obtain the gold.

People now fight for petroleum, eager to secure it; they have even begun calling it “black gold.” Allah knows best what the Messenger of Allah intended, but for the present we know “gold” only as that familiar yellow metal. We therefore leave the matter as it is. Generations still lie ahead of us, and the world has not yet ended. We will not confine the hadith to the conditions we currently witness; instead, we await the fulfillment of what the truthful and trustworthy one foretold. It will surely take place, people will fight over it, and it is one of the signs of the Hour—though it has not yet occurred. Allah is the One who grants success.