1793 — “Gog and Magog will be released, and they will come upon the people, as Allah, Mighty and Majestic, said: ‘From every elevation they will descend.’ They will overrun the earth, while the Muslims withdraw from them into their cities and fortresses, bringing their livestock in with them. Gog and Magog will drink the earth’s waters, until some of them pass by a river and drink all that is in it, leaving it dry. Then those who come after them will pass by that river and say, ‘There was once water here!’

“Until no people remain except those in a fortress or a city, one of them will say, ‘We have finished with the people of the earth; the people of heaven remain!’ Then one of them will shake his spear and throw it toward the sky, and it will return stained with blood, as a trial and tribulation. While they are in that state, Allah will send worms into their necks, like the locust grubs that emerge in their necks, and by morning they will all be dead, without a sound being heard from them.

“The Muslims will say, ‘Will no man offer himself to find out what this enemy has done?’ A man among them will volunteer for this task, seeking Allah’s reward and expecting that he will be killed. He will descend and find them dead, piled one upon another. He will call out, ‘O assembly of Muslims, receive glad tidings: Allah has spared you from your enemy!’ They will then emerge from their cities and fortresses and let their livestock out to graze. Their flesh will be the only pasture for them, and the livestock will thrive on it as they have never thrived on any vegetation they have ever grazed upon.”

It was recorded by Ibn Mājah (4079), Ibn Ḥibbān (1909), al-Ḥākim (2/245 and 4/489–490), and Aḥmad (3/77), through the route of Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, who said: ʿĀṣim ibn ʿUmar ibn Qatādah al-Anṣārī al-Ẓafarī related to me, from Maḥmūd ibn Labīd: ʿAbd al-Ashhal informed me, from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, say it. He then cited the hadith.

Al-Ḥākim said: “It is authentic according to Muslim’s criteria.” Al-Dhahabī agreed with him.

I say: This is either one of their errors or an instance of their leniency, for Muslim only included Ibn Isḥāq in corroborating reports and did not rely upon him as independent proof. His retention was weak; thus, the hadith is good, but no more than that.