Fath al-Rabbani

Sayyiduna Mahmood bin Lubaid from the tribe of Banu Abdul-Ashhal narrates from Salamah bin Salamah bin Waqsh, who was among the Companions of Badr. He says that a Jew from the tribe of Banu Abdul-Ashhal was our neighbor. A few days before the advent of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), one day he came out of his house and stood in a gathering of the tribe of Abdul-Ashhal. Salamah says: I was the youngest present there that day. I was lying in front of my house, wrapped in a sheet. That Jew mentioned resurrection after death, the Day of Judgment, reckoning, the scale, and Paradise and Hell. He spoke of these things before people who were polytheists and idol worshippers, who did not believe in resurrection after death. They said to him: "What is this? Do you also say that this will happen, and people will be raised in another world after death, where there will be Paradise and Hell, and people will be rewarded for their deeds?" He said: "Yes, by the One by whom oaths are sworn! I would even prefer that there be a great furnace of fire in this world, and people enter it, and then it is closed over them, and I am saved from the fire of Hell tomorrow." The people said to him: "Woe to you, what is its sign?" He pointed towards Makkah and Yemen and said: "A Prophet will be sent from those regions." The people asked him: "When will we be able to see him?" He looked at me—I was the youngest among them—and said: "If this boy lives, he will see him before his life ends." Salamah (may Allah be pleased with him) says: "By Allah! Only a few days and nights had passed when Allah sent His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and he was alive among us. So we believed in him, but that Jew disbelieved in him out of hatred and envy. We said to him: 'O so-and-so! Woe to you! Are you not the one who told us about this Prophet and informed us?' He said: 'Yes, of course, but this is not that Prophet.'"