Did Muhammad predict the end in 1110? 5 facts on the reports

The claim in its strongest form runs as follows. Abu Dawud records a saying in which the Prophet hoped that his community would be given a delay of half a day before its Lord. When Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas, the narrator, was asked how long half a day was, he answered that it was 500 years.^[1] Counting from the first revelation in about 610 CE gives 1110 CE, a date that passed long ago.

Part of this is sound. The report exists, it sits in a major collection, al-Albani grades it sound, and the figure 500 is in the report. The figure, though, is the explanation given by Sa’d, the Companion who narrated it; the Prophet’s words in the report do not state it. The critique’s route through “a day is 1,000 years” is a detour either way. The critique also cites al-Tabari, and on this point it is right. In his History, al-Tabari reads the half-day report as a statement of how much time remained: five hundred years, half of a divine day of a thousand. Joining it to a saying of Ibn Abbas that the world lasts seven thousand years, he concludes that about 6,500 years had passed by the time the Prophet spoke.^[2] A major classical scholar therefore did read the report as a span of time. His conclusion rests on his own arithmetic, built from the Companion’s gloss and a separate report, and the entries that follow examine whether the report itself requires it. Whether this is the Prophet’s most often repeated prophecy cannot be confirmed.

Several passages say that the time of the Hour belongs to God alone. Quran 7:187 says that knowledge of it is with the Lord, that none can reveal its time but Him, and that it comes suddenly. Quran 33:63 gives the same answer to people who ask, and adds that the Hour may well be near. Quran 31:34 lists it among the matters that only God knows.^[3]

Quran 79:42-44 describes the questioners asking when it will arrive, and the reply is that its final term is with the Lord.^[4] A critic can fairly point to 33:63 as a statement of nearness. It is a statement of nearness with no year attached, and the same verse tells the Prophet to say that the knowledge is with God. A date would contradict all of these verses, so a report that sounds like a date has to be read in a way that fits them.

As reported, the Prophet says “I hope” (arjū). He does not say that the world will end. What he hopes for is that his community will not fall short of being given half a day, which means that it will last at least that long.^[5] A floor is not a deadline. The community has lasted far more than 500 years, so the hoped-for minimum was met and nothing in the report failed.

A critic may answer that the saying still implies that the end might come soon after the half day. Nothing in the wording states that. The report also gives no starting point. Counting from the call gives 1110 CE; counting from the migration to Medina in 622 CE gives 1122 CE; counting from his birth gives another year. The choice of 610 CE is the critique’s own.

The critique’s own arithmetic depends on Quran 22:47, which says that a day with the Lord is like a thousand years of human counting. Quran 32:5 uses a similar figure for the affairs that rise to Him. Quran 70:4 speaks of a day whose measure is fifty thousand years.^[6] The Quran therefore uses more than one measure, and none of these verses is a conversion table for the Hour.

Half of 1,000 is 500, so a reader can link the report to 22:47, and some have. The exchange itself gives only a number and does not cite the verse; the link is an inference by readers. It is a reasonable inference, and also an optional one. The report holds up without it, since the number 500 is already there and the question is only what the number means.

In the well-known hadith of Gabriel, the Prophet was asked about the Hour and replied: “One who is asked knows no more than the one who is inquiring.”^[7] That is a direct statement of the limit of his own knowledge. Other reports have him joining two fingers and saying that he and the Hour were sent like these two, which speaks of closeness in the order of history and gives no date.^[8]

The later scholars did not conclude that the passing of 500 years refuted him. Writing in the ninth century of the Hijra, al-Suyuti argued in a short treatise that the community would outlast a thousand years, though not by as much as five hundred more, reasoning from reports that set the world’s span at about seven thousand years.^[9] Other scholars rejected his calculation, on the ground that the reports he used are very weak and that only God knows the Hour. Al-Tabari’s reading did imply an end some five centuries after the Prophet, so the critique has a classical precedent. Other scholars rejected such calculations, on the ground that only God knows the Hour, and the Quran and the hadith of Gabriel stand with them.