The Qur'an's predictions

The defeated Romans will be victorious

At the start of the seventh century, the Eastern Roman Empire was tottering: the Persians took Jerusalem in 614 (research file v1, part 4). In Mecca, a sura foretold the opposite of what everyone could see:

“A few years” renders bid’: fewer than ten. The prophecy held. Heraclius launched his counteroffensive in 622, the year of the Hijra; he defeated the Persians at Nineveh in 627, and peace was concluded in 628 (research file v1, part 4).

The Muslims took the verse as a prediction, and staked their word on it: Abu Bakr made a wager with Quraysh on the victory of the Romans (Tirmidhi 3193). Ibn Kathir recalls this wager with the chiefs of the idolaters, and understands that the Romans would prevail “after this span, seven years” (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 240). Munqidh al-Saqqar stresses that the prophecy was made in 617, when Byzantium seemed lost, and that the historian Gibbon held such a victory, at that moment, to be improbable (al-Saqqar, pp. 75-77). This is the very test of Deuteronomy: a precise word, about a future nothing foreshadowed, and it comes to pass.

“Another reading reverses the verbs.” Al-Qurtubi does mention a minority reading in which the Romans are victorious, then defeated (research file v1, part 4). But the text recited in the reading of Hafs, the text of Tanzil, has “have been defeated” and then “will be victorious”; and Abu Bakr’s wager shows that the Companions understood it so before the event.

Abu Lahab will burn in a Fire

Early in the Meccan period, a sura names an enemy and points to his wife, both still alive:

Abu Lahab died an unbeliever around 624, some ten years later (research file v1, part 4). He had only to feign conversion to give the lie to the Qur’an. He did not. Ibn Kathir: “God decreed that both should die in their idolatry, without becoming Muslims, not even outwardly: it is one of the clear proofs of prophethood” (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 235).

Badr: the multitude routed

Sura 54 is Meccan. The Muslims were then no more than a handful of the persecuted, and the Qur’an foretold the defeat of those who think themselves invincible:

At Badr, in 624, the Prophet ﷺ recited this verse himself (Bukhari 4875). Ibn Kathir adds that he recited it as he came out of his command shelter, and that he threw a handful of pebbles toward the enemy (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 235).

A second promise had come before the encounter; the Qur’an recalls it:

Many Companions hoped for the caravan of Quraysh, which was lightly defended, and dreaded the army (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 238). The caravan got away; the army was defeated on Friday 17 Ramadan 2 AH (March 624), with seventy of its leaders killed and seventy taken captive and ransomed (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, II, 342 and 354). Page 2 shows how, on the day before, the Prophet ﷺ had pointed out the place where each of them would fall.

The entry into the Sacred Mosque

In the year 6 (628), the Muslims set out for Mecca and were turned back at Hudaybiya. It was after this apparent failure that the promise came down:

Umar asked: “Did you not tell us that we would come to the House and circle it?” The Prophet ﷺ answered him: “Did I tell you it would be this year?” (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 237). The following year, in the year 7 (629), the Muslims entered the Sacred Mosque for the make-up pilgrimage; in 630, Mecca was conquered (research file v1, part 4).

The challenge: “and you never will”

The Qur’an challenges its opponents, and announces the outcome in advance:

It says so again: if mankind and the jinn came together to produce the like of this Qur’an, “they would not produce its like, even if they backed one another” (17:88). For Ibn Kathir, such a challenge, such assurance, so categorical an announcement can only come from one who is certain of what he announces; and no one has produced a sura like it (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 235-236). He observed this in the eighth century of the Hijra. The challenge still stands.

The promise of succession

The Qur’an also promises that this religion will prevail: “It is He who has sent His messenger with the guidance and the religion of truth, to make it prevail over all religion” (9:33, repeated word for word in 61:9). Ibn Kathir writes that “it was so”: Islam spread east and west in the time of the Companions and of their successors. Many of the pious forebears applied the promise of succession to the caliphate of Abu Bakr, though it is not limited to him (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 236-237). These texts are general, naming neither country nor date: we give them as a promise kept, not as a dated prediction.

Three verses as Ibn Kathir reads them

Ibn Kathir reads three more verses as prophecies. Their meaning is clear; their application is his reading, and we give it as such.

• The fighters to come. “He knows that there will be among you some who are sick, others traveling through the land in search of the bounty of God, and others fighting in the way of God” (73:20). Ibn Kathir holds the sura to be among the first revealed in Mecca, whereas fighting was prescribed only in Medina, after the Hijra (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 235). The argument assumes that this twentieth verse came down in Mecca, together with the opening of the sura.
• The expulsion. “They very nearly drove you out of the land, to expel you from it; but then they would have remained after you only a little while” (17:76). For Ibn Kathir, those who had plotted to imprison him ﷺ, kill him or expel him perished at Badr, in the second year of the Hijra (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 239-240). The second half of the verse is in the conditional: the application is his.
• A people of great might. “You will be called against a people of great might: you will fight them, or they will submit” (48:16). Hawazin, the followers of Musaylima or the Romans: whichever the identification, says Ibn Kathir, “that came to pass” (Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat, I, 237). The battle of al-Yamama, against Musaylima, took place in 12 AH (633-634) (al-Salihi, X, 96).

How this page connects to the others

• The test these prophecies meet: The test of a true prophet.
• The places where the dead of Badr would fall, foretold the day before, and the admission of Umayya ibn Khalaf: page 2, Fulfilled in his lifetime.
• The account of Badr, Hudaybiya and the conquest: From Badr to Tabuk.
• What the Qur’an reveals with no biblical counterpart: what the Qur’an alone tells.
• The objection “he composed the Qur’an himself”: the author of the Qur’an.

Sources for this page

• Qur’an: Tanzil text (Uthmani); translation of the meaning by the site.
• Hadiths: Tirmidhi 3193 (Abu Bakr’s wager); Bukhari 4875 (54:45 recited at Badr).
• Ibn Kathir, Mu’jizat al-Nabi ﷺ (extract from al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya), ed. al-Sayyid Ibrahim Amin Muhammad, al-Maktaba al-Tawfiqiyya, Cairo, I, 235-240 (Shamela 23678).
• Ibn Kathir, al-Sira al-nabawiyya, ed. Mustafa Abd al-Wahid, Dar al-Ma’rifa, Beirut, 1976, II, 342 and 354 (Shamela 930).
• Al-Salihi al-Shami, Subul al-huda wa-l-rashad, ed. Adil Abd al-Mawjud and Ali Mu’awwad, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, Beirut, 1993, X, 96 (Shamela 1693).
• Munqidh al-Saqqar, Hal bashshara al-Kitab al-Muqaddas bi-Muhammad ﷺ?, al-Huda wa-l-Nur series, 5, 2023, pp. 75-77.
• Research file “The Prophet ﷺ Foretold”, v1.0, 14 October 2026, part 4 (revised 3 November 2026).
• Research file “His prophecies, from his lifetime to our day”, v1.0, 2 November 2026: supplements to part 4, first and second periods.