Thus, if he had retained this hadith and had not needed prompting, it is authentic, though there is disagreement as to whether al-Awza'i heard from Nafi'. Yet it appears to me that it is a good hadith, for it is established that among the signs of the Hour are people who will arise and treat the Quran as melodies. Its documentation has preceded under no. (979).

Ahmad and others narrated from Uthman ibn Abi al-As, in a hadith traced back to the Prophet: “... Then the Dajjal will emerge amid the vast hosts of people.” Its chain of transmission is weak. It has a corroborating narration from the hadith of Shahr ibn Hawshab, from Abdullah ibn Amr, traced back to the Prophet, with the wording: “People will emerge from the East, reciting the Quran, which does not go beyond ...” the hadith. It was recorded by al-Hakim (4/486–487), al-Tayalisi in his Musnad (2293), and Ahmad (2/198–199 and 209), through Qatadah, from him.

Abu Janab, Yahya ibn Abi Hayyah, differed from him, narrating from Shahr ibn Hawshab: “I heard Abdullah ibn Umar ...” and then mentioning something similar. Ahmad recorded it (2/84) in the Musnad of Abdullah ibn Umar ibn al-Khattab. Qatadah’s narration is the correct one, since Abu Janab is weak because of his frequent concealment in transmission, as stated in al-Taqrib. Shahr is acceptable in corroborating narrations, and some scholars grade his hadith as good; perhaps for this reason al-Hakim and al-Dhahabi made no comment on it.

His words, “their vast hosts”: a'rad is the plural of 'ird, with the first letter vowelled and the second unvowelled, meaning a great army. It is borrowed either from 'ird in the sense of the side of a mountain, or from the sense of clouds that fill the horizon. This was stated by al-Sindi.