of this world?” He said: “No one has asked me about it before you, since I asked the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, about it. He said: ‘No one has asked me about it before you. It is …’” Then he mentioned it.

I say: This is a good chain of transmission. Its narrators are trustworthy and are among the narrators of the two Sahihs, except that they narrated from ʿĀṣim only in corroboration. Yet al-Aʿmash also followed him in reporting it from Abu Ṣāliḥ, though they differed concerning its chain of transmission from him.

Ahmad (6/445 and 452), al-Ṭaḥāwī in Mushkil al-Āthār (3/47), and likewise Ibn Jarīr narrated it; Ibn Jarīr gave a lengthy account of the routes leading to it. He and Ahmad (5/315), as well as Ibn al-Jawzī in Jāmiʿ al-Masānīd (folio 79/2), also narrated a corroborating report from ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit, with similar wording. Its narrators are trustworthy and are among the narrators of the two Sahihs, were it not that some versions recorded by Ibn Jarīr contain an indication that the chain is interrupted between Abu Salamah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and ʿUbādah. However, Ibn Jarīr has another route from ʿUbādah; thus, taken together, these routes establish the hadith as authentic. Ibn Jarīr (11/94) also records another corroborating report from Abu Hurayrah, attributed to the Prophet, with the wording: “The good dream is the glad tidings: the believer sees it, or it is seen for him.” Its chain is sound. Muslim also recorded it (7/52–53) in separate places through two routes from him, one of which is Ibn Jarīr’s route.

1787 — “Before the Hour, there will be transformations, the earth swallowing people up, and showers of stones.”

Ibn Mājah (4059) narrated it from Sayyār, from Ṭāriq, from ʿAbd Allāh, from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.

I say: This chain is acceptable as corroborative evidence. Its narrators are trustworthy and are among the narrators of Muslim, apart from this Sayyār, who is Abu Ḥamzah al-Kūfī. Ibn Ḥibbān mentioned him in The Reliable Narrators, and a number of people narrated from him. Al-Būṣīrī deemed it defective in al-Zawāʾid (folio 272/1), on the grounds that there is an interruption between Sayyār and Ṭāriq. But this is baseless, because he based it on the assumption that this Sayyār was Abu al-Ḥakam, whereas he was not. It is true, however, that Bashīr ibn