2733 — “By Him in Whose Hand is the soul of Abū al-Qāsim, Jesus son of Mary will certainly descend as a just leader and an equitable judge. He will surely break the cross, kill the swine, reconcile people with one another, remove rancour, and be offered wealth, which he will not accept. Then, by Allah, if he were to stand at my grave and say, ‘O Muhammad,’ I would answer him.”

Abū Yaʿlā transmitted it in his Musnad (4/1552): Aḥmad ibn ʿĪsā narrated to us; Ibn Wahb informed us, from Abū Ṣakhr, that Saʿīd al-Maqburī informed him that he heard Abū Hurayrah say: I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ … and he mentioned it.

I say: This is a good chain of transmission. All its narrators are trustworthy and are narrators of the two Ṣaḥīḥs, apart from Abū Ṣakhr—who is Ḥumayd ibn Ziyād al-Kharrāṭ—who is among Muslim’s narrators alone. Some scholars criticized him, while Ibn Ḥibbān, al-Ḥākim, and al-Būṣīrī authenticated his reports, and al-Mundhirī accepted him. See hadith 83 in my book Ṣaḥīḥ al-Targhīb wa-al-Tarhīb (1/39).

Al-Haythamī said (8/211): “It was narrated by Abū Yaʿlā, and its narrators are the narrators of the Ṣaḥīḥ.”

Al-Bukhārī (3448), Muslim (1/93–94), and others also transmitted it through Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, from Abū Hurayrah, but without the words: “He will reconcile people with one another and remove rancour.” The second of these two phrases is found in Muslim and others through ʿAṭāʾ ibn Mīnā, from Abū Hurayrah.

The final sentence has another route from him, with the wording: “…and he will surely come to my grave and greet me with peace, and I will surely return his greeting.” Al-Ḥākim transmitted it, and al-Dhahabī and other later scholars declared it authentic. It contains two evident defects, which I explained