ʿAmr ibn Zurārah narrated to us; Ziyād narrated to him, from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq; Muḥammad ibn Muslim ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī told me, from ʿAlī ibn Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās—on the authority of a group from the Anṣār—that the Messenger of Allāh (peace and blessings be upon him) said to them:

“What have you been saying about that shooting star you see blazing across the sky?”

They replied, “O Messenger of Allāh, whenever we saw it flare up we used to say: ‘A king has died; a child has been born; a child has died.’”

The Messenger of Allāh said, “It is not as you suppose. Rather, when Allāh decrees a matter concerning His creation, the inhabitants of the Throne hear it and declare His perfection (tasbīḥ); those beneath them then declare His perfection in turn, and so it continues layer by layer until the glorification reaches the lowest heaven. Then the angels there say to one another, ‘Why have you glorified?’ They answer, ‘Those above us glorified, so we followed their glorification.’ The angels reply, ‘Will you not ask those above you why they glorified?’ They ask, and are told: ‘Allāh has decreed regarding His creation such-and-such.’ The news then descends from one heaven to the next until it arrives at the lowest heaven, where it is discussed openly. The devils snatch portions of it by eavesdropping—amid conjecture and discrepancy—and carry it to the soothsayers on earth. The soothsayers then relate it, missing the mark at times and hitting it at others. Thereafter Allāh barred the devils from the heavens with these meteors, and soothsaying has been cut off today; there is no longer any true soothsaying.”