“Before the Dajjal there will be years of deception …” The report is like the hadith under discussion, except that it says: “He replied, ‘A petty evildoer will speak on public affairs.’”

Immediately afterward, Aḥmad, his son ʿAbd Allāh, and Abū Yaʿlā (1/378/3715) narrated it through Ibn Isḥāq’s first route, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Dīnār, from Anas. The annotator of Abū Yaʿlā erred by treating Ibn Isḥāq’s route from Ibn al-Munkadir in Aḥmad and this route as one and the same.

Returning to the hadith of ʿAwf: Ibn Isḥāq was corroborated in this by two narrators. The first was Maslamah ibn ʿAlī: Ibrāhīm ibn Abī ʿAblah narrated to us from his father, from ʿAwf ibn Mālik. Al-Ṭabarānī recorded it (18/67/no. 123), as did Ibn ʿAsākir in History of Damascus (16/226/2). This Maslamah is abandoned.

The other was Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh, from Ibrāhīm ibn Abī ʿAblah, from ʿAwf ibn Mālik, in a report attributed to the Prophet, with similar wording. Al-Ṭabarānī recorded it (no. 124), and its annotator, our colleague Ḥamdī al-Salafī, said: “Its chain of transmission is good!”

I say: It would indeed have been so, were it not for the break between Ibrāhīm ibn Abī ʿAblah and ʿAwf, for there were seventy-nine years between their deaths. For this reason, they did not record him as having narrated from any of the Companions other than Anas ibn Mālik, may Allah be pleased with him, and those like him. Nor did they mention any narration from ʿAwf. The previous reports show that his father, Abū ʿAblah, stands between them.

Moreover, what further strengthens the hadith is that it has corroborating reports from more than one Companion. Among them is a report from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, attributed to the Prophet, with similar wording up to the words, “and the trustworthy will be deemed treacherous,” and it adds: