Ten great signs, listed by the Prophet ﷺ in one sitting. His own narration tells us which one walks out first, and how to survive him.
The companions were sitting together discussing the Last Hour when the Prophet ﷺ walked in on them and asked what they were talking about. Then he told them something that ended the speculation forever: the Hour will not come until you see ten signs. And he listed them in one sitting. The smoke. The Dajjal. The beast. The sun rising from the west. The descent of 'Isa, son of Maryam. Ya'juj and Ma'juj. Three landslides, one in the east, one in the west, one in Arabia. And last, a fire from Yemen that drives people to their final gathering place. So which comes first? The narrations do not number all ten in one fixed order. But the Prophet's ﷺ own telling fixes a sequence inside them, and it begins with a man. The first of the great signs to walk out among people is the Dajjal, and everything you love will depend on recognising him.
Before the ten great signs, there are minor signs, and the Qur'an closed the debate about those fourteen centuries ago: "Then do they await except that the Hour should come upon them unexpectedly? But already there have come some of its indications" (47:18). Already. That was revealed while the Prophet ﷺ still walked the earth. Every generation since has lived deeper inside the countdown. The great signs are different. They are not a slow drift. They are ten dominoes, and once the first one falls, the rest follow fast.
In the long narration of an-Nawwas ibn Sam'an, the Prophet ﷺ describes the sequence as one continuous story: the Dajjal emerges and roams the earth, then 'Isa the son of Maryam descends and pursues him and kills him, and while 'Isa is still among the people, Ya'juj and Ma'juj are released. One event flowing into the next. The chain starts with the Dajjal.
And the Prophet ﷺ ranked him too. "There would be no creation creating more trouble than the Dajjal, right from the creation of Adam to the Last Hour." Sit with the size of that sentence. Firaun happened. The flood of Nuh happened. Every plague, every genocide, every war in history happened. And the greatest trial of them all has not happened yet.
Here is a detail that should raise the hair on your arms: "No prophet was sent but that he warned his followers against the one-eyed liar." Every prophet. Nuh warned his people about him. Ibrahim warned his. Thousands of years before his arrival, the Dajjal was already the standing item on every prophet's agenda. No other trial in history got that treatment.
The same narration hands us his identification: he is blind in one eye, and your Lord is not one-eyed, and between his eyes is written kafir, disbeliever. The Prophet ﷺ anchored the test in something no deception can fake: whatever wonders this man performs, you can see him. And your Lord cannot be seen in this world. Hold that one sentence and his entire claim collapses.
How long will the trial last? The companions asked exactly that. Forty days, the Prophet ﷺ said, but one day like a year, one day like a month, one day like a week, and the rest like your days. The companions, practical to the bone, immediately asked whether one day's prayers would suffice for the day that is like a year. No, he told them; estimate the times and keep praying. Even inside the strangest day in human history, the answer is still the prayer schedule.
And the trial itself will be a test of trust in Allah over trust in your own eyes. "There would be a garden and fire with him," the Prophet ﷺ said, "and his fire would be a garden and his garden would be fire." He will offer paradise and threaten hell, and both labels are lies. The people who follow their eyes will walk into his garden and burn. The people who follow the Prophet's ﷺ words will walk into his fire and find that its label was the lie. The whole test, compressed: whose word do you trust when your own senses vote against it?
His reach will be immense, but not total. "There will be no town which the Dajjal will not enter except Makkah and Madinah, and there will be no entrance but the angels will be standing in rows guarding it." Rows of angels at every gate. And Madinah will shake three times, and every disbeliever and hypocrite in it will be expelled to him. The city itself will filter its people.
You are not left defenceless. The Prophet ﷺ gave the protection by name: whoever memorises the first ten verses of Surah al-Kahf will be protected from the Dajjal. Ten verses. That is the entire admission fee for protection from the worst trial since Adam. Most of us have memorised longer song lyrics. The believers who take this seriously are not the ones who will need luck on that day.
The Dajjal opens the sequence. Further along it stands the sign that ends all choosing: the sun rising from where it set. The Prophet ﷺ said that when it rises from the west and the people see it, they will all believe, and that is when believing will do no good. Then he recited the verse: "The Day that some of the signs of your Lord will come, no soul will benefit from its faith as long as it had not believed before" (6:158). And of the release of Ya'juj and Ma'juj, the Qur'an says: "the true promise has approached; then suddenly the eyes of those who disbelieved will be staring in horror: O woe to us, we were unmindful of this" (21:96-97).
Read the sequence the way the companions did, as a personal deadline rather than a spectacle. The first great sign is a deceiver you can be trained against today. The later signs are a door swinging shut. Between now and the first domino, faith is still accepted, tawbah is still open, and ten verses of al-Kahf are still sitting in the mushaf waiting for you to learn them. The people of that era will have no time to prepare. You are being given the one thing they will beg for. Time.
Silsila Research Desk
Grade: Sahih · 7 min read