weak, as he claimed. Rather, it is good, as we have said; and this corroborates part of it. Perhaps he was misled by Fuʾad ʿAbd al-Baqi’s attribution of it to al-Bukhari and Muslim in his source documentation for al-Adab al-Mufrad (p. 304). This is the opposite of what its commentator, al-Jilani, did, for he attributed it only to al-Hakim.

2808 — “Indeed, after you there will come the lying misleader. The back of his head is tightly curled—tightly curled—tightly curled. He will say, ‘I am your Lord.’ Whoever says, ‘You are not our Lord; rather, our Lord is Allah. In Him we place our trust, and to Him we turn in repentance. We seek refuge in Allah from your associationism,’ he will have no power over him.”

Imam Ahmad recorded it (5/372): Sulayman ibn Harb narrated to us: Hammad ibn Zayd narrated to us, from Ayyub, from Abu Qilabah, who said: I saw a man in Medina, around whom the people had gathered, saying, “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said; the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said.” He was a man from among the Prophet’s Companions. I heard him saying this, and he then related the hadith.

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission; all its narrators are trustworthy and are among the narrators relied upon by al-Bukhari and Muslim. The unknown identity of a Companion does not detract from it, as is established in hadith terminology. His words, “the back of his head,” mean: behind it. “Tightly curled” means that the hair of his head is crimped by curliness, like still water or sand when the wind blows over them, causing them to ripple and form streaks, as stated in al-Nihayah.

The hadith is explicit evidence that the great Dajjal is a person with a head and hair; he is not merely a concept or a metaphor for corruption, as some whose faith is weak like to treat the numerous reports concerning him—authentically established from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, through mass transmission, as the leading hadith scholars have explicitly affirmed. So do not, after that, be deceived