for forty days: one day like a year, one day like a month, and one day like a week—that is, like a Friday. The rest of his days will be like the days we normally know. Yet Allah will endow him with powers granted to no one else: he will command the sky and it will send down rain; he will command the earth and it will bring forth vegetation; he will command the earth and it will become barren, and the sky and it will dry up, withholding its rain. He will have with him what seems to be a Garden and a Fire, but they are illusory: his Garden is actually a Fire, and his Fire is actually a Garden.

This man is one-eyed; his eye looks like a bulging grape. Written between his eyes is “kāfir”—kāf, fā’, rā’. Every believer, whether literate or illiterate, will read it, whereas no hypocrite or disbeliever will do so, even if he can read and write. This is one of the signs of Allah.

Allah will then send Jesus son of Mary, peace be upon him, against him. He will descend from heaven and kill him—as some hadiths mention—at the Gate of Ludd in Palestine, putting an end to him.

In short, the Dajjāl is the worst absentee whose coming is awaited, because his trial is immense. That is why, in every prayer, we say: “I seek refuge with Allah from the torment of Hell, from the torment of the grave, from the trial of life and death, and from the trial of the Messiah Dajjāl.” The Prophet singled it out because it is the greatest trial that can befall a human being in his lifetime.

Seventh: “or the Hour”—that is, the establishment of the Hour, which entails universal death,