Stations of the End · Where an army enters the earth
البيداء
Al-Bayda · The Swallowing Plain
A featureless stretch between Makkah and Madinah appointed for one future event: the swallowing of an army.
The account
Al-Bayda is the tradition's name for open, empty ground on the Makkah road, and one future event stands written against it, recorded from Umm Salamah in Sahih Muslim: an army will march against the House to seize a man taking refuge there, "and when they are at a bayda of the earth, it will swallow their first and their last" (Muslim 2882).
The Prophet's ﷺ questioner asked the enduring legal question: among them are the coerced and the mere traveler who joined the road. The answer wrote the jurisprudence of company forever: "they are swallowed together, then raised on the Day of Rising according to their intentions." The ground makes no exceptions; the resurrection does the sorting. The Codex has met this verb before, under Qarun's house and in the three landslides of the Ten, but al-Bayda's entry is the most exact: one plain, one army, one swallowing. As with Ludd, the map's lesson is jurisdictional: the earth is not neutral terrain in the last days; it is deputized. Choose your caravan, the plain advises, as carefully as your creed.
The facts
- EventAn army swallowed whole
- Target of the armyThe man at the House
- The coercedRaised by intention
- VerbKhasf: the earth deputized
The narrations
When they are at a bayda of the earth, it will swallow their first and their last… then they are raised according to their intentions.
Muslim 2882
Read beside it
The words
On the Path
People beside it
- Umm SalamahMother of the Believers · Counsel of Hudaybiyyahأم سلمة
- Al-MahdiThe rightly-guided ruler of the last daysالمهدي
Places