Al Fitan

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Minor signs

Euphrates

In brief

The Euphrates, al-Furat in Arabic, is one of the great rivers of the Middle East. The Prophet ﷺ said that one day it will uncover a mountain of gold, or a treasure of gold in another wording, and people will fight over it.

The fight will be terrible. Of every hundred people who fight over it, ninety-nine will be killed, and each of them will think, 'Perhaps I will be the one who survives.' That is why the Prophet ﷺ gave a clear command: whoever is there at that time should not take anything from it.

The river flows from Turkey through Syria and Iraq, and its flow has dropped sharply in recent decades because of dams, drought and heavy use. Some writers link the shrinking river to this hadith, but the hadith speaks of gold being uncovered and a deadly fight, not simply of the river drying up. Scholars differ on whether the gold is literal or stands for another kind of wealth, such as oil. The hadith do not give it a fixed place in the sequence; scholars count it among the signs before the great ones.

What to do

The command is to stay away from it. Greed for wealth is the trial, not the gold.

Where it sits in the sequence

Phase 2 / 7Signs that spread among people

The narrations do not put these in order, and many of them overlap. Sahih al-Bukhari 7121 lists several together.