No hadeeth determined lifespan of Muslim nation

4-10-2017 | IslamWeb

Question:

Assalaamu alaykum. I have read a hadith which says that the lifespan of this Ummah (community) covers 1500 years. I am not talking about the Day of Judgement but about the lifespan of this Ummah, after which there will be no Muslims on earth. Could you please provide more information regarding this hadith? May Allah reward you. May Allah bless this Ummah with success in this life and the Hereafter. Ameen.

Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allaah exalt his mention ) is His slave and Messenger.

We have not come across a hadeeth determining the lifespan of this Ummah (nation) and that it will be one thousand and five hundred years. Rather, it is nothing but guessing. The one who spread this idea among the late comers is Ahmad Muhammad Jamaal, the author of the book ‘Umr Ummat-il-Islam (The Lifespan of the Muslim Nation). 

He neither mentioned any explicit authentic hadeeth nor any weak hadeeth in regard to determining the lifespan of the Muslim nation; rather, he relied on weak ahaadeeth and other ahaadeeth in which the Prophet  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allaah exalt his mention ) gave an example of the work of this Muslim nation compared to the work of the Jews and the Christians, so he deduced from them through mathematical calculations that the lifespan of the Muslim nation is a little bit more than one thousand and four hundred years, which is close to one thousand and five hundred years.

Many scholars refuted his claim, including Shaykh Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Ismaa'eel Al-Muqaddim in his book entitled Fiqh Ashraat As-Saa’ah (The Jurisprudence of the Signs of the Hour), and he described Jamaal's book as containing weak and fabricated ahaadeeth and mentioned that it contains many errors by the author.

Moreover, another response to him was specifically written by the author of a book entitled Ar-Radd Al-Ameen ‘ala Kutub ‘Umr Ummat-il-Islam wa Radd As-Sihaam wal Qawl-ul-Mubeen.

Allah knows best.

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