The division of the nations and following the ways of those who went before

Sayyiduna Anas bin Malik (may Allah be pleased with him) narrates: A man was mentioned before the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) who inflicted heavy losses on the enemy and was very diligent in worship and devotion. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: I do not recognise him. The narrator said: His description is such-and-such. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: I do not recognise him. The narrator says: Meanwhile that man appeared, and the narrator said: This is that man. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: I did not recognise him. This is the first horn that I see in my Ummah, and there is a mark of Satan in him. When the man came near, he greeted with salam, and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) returned his greeting. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) asked him: When you came before us, did you think to yourself that among all these people there is no one more excellent than you? He replied: By Allah, yes! Then that man entered the mosque and began to pray. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to Sayyiduna Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him): Get up and kill him. Sayyiduna Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) went in and found the man standing in prayer. Sayyiduna Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) thought to himself: Prayer has a particular sanctity and right; it would be appropriate if I asked the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) about this again. He came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) asked him: Have you killed him? He said: No! I found him praying, and I thought that prayer has sanctity and a particular right. If you wish me to kill him, I will kill him. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: You are not the one for him. O Umar! You go and kill him. Sayyiduna Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) entered the mosque, and the man was in prostration. Sayyiduna Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) waited for him for quite a long time; then Sayyiduna Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) thought to himself: Prostration has a particular right; it would be appropriate if I asked the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) about this again, for one who is better than me asked the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) again. Then he came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) asked: Have you killed him? He said: No! I saw him in prostration, and I thought that prostration has a particular right; but if you wish me to kill him, I will kill him. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: You are not the one for him. O Ali! You are the one for him, if you find him. Sayyiduna Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) went in and found that the man had already left the mosque. He came back to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) asked: Have you killed him? He said: No! The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: If this man had been killed, not even two men of my Ummah would have differed until the Dajjal emerges. Then the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) told them about the nations and said: "The Ummah of Sayyiduna Musa (peace be upon him) split into seventy-one groups, of which seventy will go to Hell and one will go to Paradise. The Ummah of Sayyiduna Isa (peace be upon him) split into seventy-two groups, of which seventy-one will go to Hell and one will go to Paradise. Then the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: My Ummah will exceed both these groups by one sect; seventy-two of them will go to Hell and one will go to Paradise." The people said: O Messenger of Allah! Who will they (that is, those who go to Paradise) be? The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: The Jama'ah. Ya'qub bin Zayd says: Whenever Sayyiduna Ali bin Abi Talib (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated this hadith from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), he would also recite this verse of the Qur'an with it: "And among the people of Musa is a group who guide by the truth and by it establish justice." Then, when he mentioned the Ummah of Sayyiduna Isa (peace be upon him), he recited this verse: "And if the People of the Book had believed (in the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him) and been mindful of Allah, We would have removed from them their misdeeds and admitted them to Gardens of Bliss." Then, when he mentioned our Ummah, he recited this verse: "And among those We have created is a group who guide by the truth and by it establish justice (or judge)."
Abu Ya'la recorded it; its chain contains Abu Ma'shar Najih, in whom there is weakness. Various chains of this hadith have already passed in the chapter on fighting the Khawarij.

Sayyiduna Abu Umamah (may Allah be pleased with him) narrates: I heard the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) say: "The Children of Israel (that is, the Jews) split into seventy-one sects, and the Christians split into seventy-two sects, and my Ummah will exceed them by one sect. All of them will go to Hell, except the great majority (al-sawad al-a'zam)."
Al-Tabarani recorded it in al-Mu'jam al-Awsat, and something similar in al-Mu'jam al-Kabir; its chain contains Abu Ghalib, whom Yahya bin Ma'in and others declared thiqah (trustworthy); the rest of its narrators are thiqat (trustworthy), and the same is the case with one of the two chains of al-Mu'jam al-Kabir.

Sayyiduna Sa'd bin Abi Waqqas (may Allah be pleased with him) narrates that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "The Children of Israel split into seventy-one groups, and the nights and days will not come to an end until my Ummah too splits into as many parts."
Al-Bazzar recorded it; its chain contains Musa bin Ubaydah al-Rabadhi, who is da'if (weak).

Sayyiduna Abdullah bin Umar (may Allah be pleased with them both) narrates: I heard the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) say: "In my Ummah there will be more than seventy callers, all of them calling to Hell. If I wished, I could tell you the names of their fathers, their mothers and their tribes."
Abu Ya'la recorded it; its chain contains Layth bin Abi Sulaym, who is a mudallis, and the rest of its narrators are thiqat (trustworthy).

Sayyiduna Abu al-Darda, Sayyiduna Abu Umamah, Sayyiduna Wathilah bin al-Asqa' and Sayyiduna Anas bin Malik (may Allah be pleased with them) narrate: "One day the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) came out to us while we were arguing about some matter of religion. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) became intensely angry; he had never before been so angry. Then he rebuked us and said: Stop! O Ummah of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him)! Those before you were destroyed for this very reason. Give up arguing, for there is little good in it. Give up arguing, for the believer does not argue. Give up arguing, for the loss of the one who argues keeps increasing. Give up arguing, for it is sin enough for you that you keep on arguing. Give up arguing, for I will not intercede on the Day of Resurrection for the one who persistently argues. Give up arguing, for I guarantee houses in three places in Paradise, in its outskirts, in its middle and in its highest part; (I will give this guarantee) to the one who gives up arguing while he is in the right. Give up arguing! For the first thing my Lord forbade me after the worship of idols was arguing, and drinking wine. Give up arguing! For Satan has despaired of being worshipped, but he is content with mutual discord among you, and that discord takes the form of arguing. Give up arguing! For the Children of Israel split into seventy-one sects and the Christians split into seventy-two sects; all of them will be upon misguidance except the great majority (al-sawad al-a'zam). (In the printed copy
the narration is like this, but perhaps through someone's oversight some words were left out in copying, since the words about the great majority concern the Ummah of Muhammad.) The people said: O Messenger of Allah! Who are the great majority? The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Those who are upon what I and my Companions are upon; the one who does not argue about the religion of Allah, and does not declare anyone of the people of tawhid a disbeliever because of committing a sin, that person will be forgiven." Then the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Islam began as something strange, and it will soon become strange again. The people said: O Messenger of Allah! Who is meant by the strangers? The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: Those who remain upright when people become corrupt, who do not argue about the religion of Allah, and who do not declare anyone of the people of tawhid a disbeliever because of some sin."
Al-Tabarani recorded it; its chain contains Kathir bin Marwan, who is very da'if (weak). Some narrations about arguing have already passed in the Book of Knowledge.

Sayyiduna Amr bin Awf (may Allah be pleased with him) narrates: We were sitting around the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in the mosque in Madinah, when Sayyiduna Jibril (peace be upon him) came with revelation. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) covered himself with his cloak and remained like that for a long while, until, when this state passed and he removed his cloak, he was sweating heavily and was holding something in his fist. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) asked: "Which of you knows the thing that comes out of the date palm?" We said: O Messenger of Allah! May our fathers and mothers be sacrificed for you, whatever comes out of the date palms, we know it, for we are people who work with date palms. Then the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) opened his blessed hand, and there was a date stone in it. He asked: "What is this?" The people said: O Messenger of Allah! It is a date stone. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) asked: "The stone of what?" The people said: It is a date stone from the year of drought. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "You have spoken the truth. Jibril has just come, and he was speaking about your religion: that you will surely follow the ways of those before you, just as one shoe matches the other, and you will surely adopt what they adopted, span for span, dhira' for dhira' (the length from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow is called a 'dhira'') and ba' for ba' (the span of both outstretched arms is called a 'ba''), so much so that if they entered a lizard's hole, you too would enter it. Indeed, the Children of Israel split after Sayyiduna Musa (peace be upon him) into seventy sects, all of them astray except one sect, and that was Islam and its community. Then the Christians split after Sayyiduna Isa (peace be upon him) into seventy-one sects, all of them astray except one, and that was Islam and their community. And you will split into seventy-two sects; all of them will go to Hell except one sect, and that is Islam and their community."
Al-Tabarani recorded it; its chain contains Kathir bin Abdullah, who is da'if (weak); Tirmidhi graded a hadith of his as hasan, and the rest of its narrators are thiqat (trustworthy).

Sayyiduna Abdullah bin Mas'ud (may Allah be pleased with him) narrates: The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) came in and said: "Ibn Mas'ud!" I said: O Messenger of Allah! Here I am at your service. He asked this three times. Then he said: "Do you know who is the most excellent of people?" I said: Allah and His Messenger know best. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "The most excellent of people is the one who is most excellent in deeds, when they have understanding of the religion." Then he said: "O Ibn Mas'ud!" I said: O Messenger of Allah! Here I am at your service. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Do you know who is the most knowledgeable of people?" I said: Allah and His Messenger know best. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "The most knowledgeable of people and the one with the most insight into the truth is the one who is so when people differ, even if he falls short in deeds, even if he has to drag himself along on his buttocks. Those before me split into seventy-two sects; three of them were saved and all the rest were destroyed. (These three sects were:) One group rose against the kings and fought them over their religion and the religion of Sayyiduna Isa bin Maryam (peace be upon him); the kings seized them, killed them and cut them into pieces with saws. Another (that is, the second) group had no strength to fight the kings, nor could they stay among them and call people to Allah and to the religion of Sayyiduna Isa bin Maryam (peace be upon him); so they spread out into various lands and adopted monasticism." The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "They are the very people about whom Allah Almighty said: 'And monasticism, they originated it; We did not prescribe it for them, and they adopted it only to seek the pleasure of Allah Almighty.'" The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Whoever believes in me, affirms me and follows me has truly observed it as it should be observed, and those who do not follow me, they are the ones who will be destroyed."

In one narration the words are: "One group stayed among the kings and tyrants and called to the religion of Sayyiduna Isa (peace be upon him); they were seized, cut with saws and burned in fire, yet they remained patient until they reached the presence of Allah." The rest of the narration is as before.
Al-Tabarani recorded it with two chains; the narrators of one of them are the narrators of the Sahih, except Bukayr bin Ma'ruf, whom Ahmad and others declared thiqah (trustworthy), and there is some weakness in him.