According to severalSunni Islamichadiths that describeIslamic eschatology,Gharqad (Arabic:غرقد) is a kind of tree that would protectJews fromMuslims at theend times.
It is mentioned in these hadiths thatAbu Huraira reported that theIslamic prophetMuhammad said:[1][2]
The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding, will say: "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him." – But the tree Gharqad will not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.
It is considered likely that the gharqad tree is of the genusLycium.[3][4]
The Sunni Hadith collections ofSahih al-Bukhari andSahih Muslim give detailed accounts of a supernatural apocalyptic battle between Muslims and the forces ofDajjal.[5][6]
The Dajjal was described byMuhammad as the Great deceiver who will come during the end of time, will claim to beAllah andJesus,[7] perform miracles that only a god would be able to perform such as resurrection and bringing rain upon demand and will seemingly unite people in peace. In addition, it is described that the Dajjal will have physical deficiencies such as having one eye, and upon the head of The Dajjal will be written the letters 'كفر' (meaning kfr or 'heretic' in Arabic) but only the believers will be able to read these letters, whilst others will not and thus be deceived by his claims of divinity.[8]
According to one report, the Dajjal's army will be composed of 70,000 Jews fromIsfahan, all armed, and 70,000Tatars, as well as people fromKhorasan (modern-day Afghanistan).[8]
It is prophesied that beforeJudgement Day, a supernatural fire will shoot up fromHijaz that will illuminate much of the Middle East.[5] The riverEuphrates will part to reveal gold. But the biggest disaster will be whenGog and Magog are unleashed because the barrier built byDhu al-Qarnayn will have ruptured.[5] And theBeast of the Earth will emerge.[5] The Mahdi will lead a Muslim army against Dajjal and his followers in an apocalyptic battle known asal-Malhamat al-Kubra. After theSecond Coming of Jesus, Jesus himself will kill the Dajjal.[7]
Within Sunni Islam, these narrations are understood as part of Sunni eschatology's description of agreat war at theend times against the forces ofDajjal which should occur after thesecond coming of Jesus according to Islam. Then, according to thiseschatology, Jesus will lead an army ofMuslims, some of whom are righteousChristians and righteous Jews converting to Islam in the eve of the battle, to fight the army of Dajjal consisting of Jews believing Dajjal is a god, and if a Jew of Dajjal's army hides behind a stone or a tree, this stone or tree will miraculously talk to Muslims to expose the Jew unless it is a Gharqad tree, because it is "their (the Jews') tree".[9][10]
According to Sunni interpretation inAshrat al-sa’a (“the signs of the hour”) by Yusuf al-Wabil, the Dajjal’s army will be made up of Jews, Persians, Turks, Bedouins, and women. Traditions from Bukhari’s and Ibn Maja’s hadith collections also include Persians, Turks, and Bedouins as well as Jews.[11]
Sunni moderate writers debate the subject in eschatological terms, emphasizing that this should happen only in the end times after the second coming of Jesus in accordance with Sunni thought and should not damage currentIslamic–Jewish relations.[12]
Fayd al-Bari, a prominent Sunni commentary, explains that Jesus will only fight against those Jews who join the Dajjal's army, not all Jews around the world.[6][13]
A comment by 8th century Islamic traditionalistNaim ibn Hammad states that after al-Mahdi recovers theArk of the Covenant, most Jews will convert to Islam and join Muslims in the fight against Dajjal.[6]
The general message of the text is often alleged as aprophecy, but it does not appear in theQuran, which Muslims believe isAllah'srevelation to Muhammad.
According toMemri TV,Yasir Qadhi described this text as referring to an end times war which is "a fight between good and evil"[14] and that the text is "predictive and not prescriptive".[14]
Not all Muslims accept all hadiths as reliable and may conclude somewhat differenteschatology; mostShia Muslims reject Sunni hadiths as unreliable and have their own hadiths, such asThe Four Books. While according to Karimov,Zaydi Shia may hold Sunni hadiths with high esteem,[15][better source needed] Zaydis have their own primary hadith traditions.[16] While someIbadi Muslims do not consider Sunni hadiths as reliable and rely onTartib al-Musnad, Hoffman noted that contemporary Ibadis often approve of the standard Sunni collections.[17]
Dajani Daoudi concluded that by comprehensive review of the Quran, no such hadith would exist since it openly contradicts Islamic faith and that Muslims believe a hadith is the word ofman while the Quran is the word ofGod.[18] Daoudi added that "this hadith" (that which he quoted) was collected 150 years after thedeath of Muhammad, that the authenticity of such a hadith is disputed, and that this particular hadith has become controversial forpromoting anti-Jewish sentiments among Muslims.[19]
NeitherNitraria norLycium have any sanctity inJudaism; they are not one of thefour species of Sukkot, they are not one of theSeven Species of the Land of Israel and they are not one of theincense plants of the Torah; they are also not used forHavdalah and there is noJewish tradition of eating theirfruits inTu BiShvat.
Furthermore,Lycium is mentioned in theBible only once in a negative context in theBook of Judges, asJotham compares his brotherAvimelech, the self-proclaimed king ofShechem after he murdered his other brothers, to aLycium, which is seen as a useless tree who can only cause harm.[20]
Freyer Stowasser describes 19th and early 20th century views about apocalyptic hadiths of the sort introduced byMuhammad Abduh and the young,pre-SalafiistRashid Rida:[11]
The narratives on the Dajjal's end time reign and ultimate defeat were unreliable because of: questionable origin and transmitters, weak chains of hadith authentication, internal contradictions on this topic within the hadith corpus as a whole (that invalidate all of its parts), and the fact that these narratives contradict the Qur'anic text.
Thesemodernist, deconstructionist approaches were unacceptable to Sunni clerical traditionalists. They have remained loyal to the more "literalist and inherited form" of apocalyptic hadiths, although they tend not to interpret them as calling for revolutionary political movements.[11]
Sunni Islamists who strongly advocate for thedestruction of the State of Israel have propagated a false allegation thatIsraeli Jews are planting millions of gharqad trees throughoutIsrael in preparation for a dire war.[21]Grand Mufti of JerusalemMuhammad Ahmad Hussein evoked the tree in a 2012 speech, saying that it was planted around all of the Israeli settlements. Johannes Gerloff stated that most Arab Muslims know what it is, and noted a growing number of articles online about it. However, Israelinurseries and botanists are unaware of the identity of the "tree of the Jew".[22]
The gharqad tree is quoted in the1988 founding charter of Hamas, Article 7, stating that every stone and tree—except for the gharqad tree—will speak aloud to reveal if a Jew is taking cover, so that the Muslim army can find and kill the Jew.[23]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.