In another foretelling of this turbulent period, Abū Sa‘īd al-Khudrī  narrates that the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said, “A dissenting faction will splinter at a time of disunity between the Muslims, and they will be fought by the more correct of the two parties.”299

Again, it was the army of Kufa (led by ‘Alī), not Shām (led by Mu‘āwiyah), who fought the Khārijite rebels at Nahrawān in 37H, making them the “more correct” and non-transgressing party. Regarding the roots of the Khārijites, the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was once accused by a hypocrite known as Dhul Khuwayṣirah of inequity. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم told those seeking to punish this man for his insult, “Leave him be. He will certainly have fellows who will cause you to belittle your own prayer when compared to their prayer, and his fasting compared to their fasting. They will recite the Qur’an, but it will not pass beyond their throats [to their hearts]. They will exit the religion as an arrow passes through a game animal, whereby one would look at the arrowhead and not see any traces on it; one would look at the binding which fastens the arrowhead to the rod and not see any traces on it; one would look at the rod itself and not see any traces on it; one would look at the feathers and not see any traces on them. It would go straight through the bowels and the blood.

Their sign will be a black man whose limbs will appear like a woman’s breasts, or like a disfigured lump of flesh. They will emerge at a time when the people are disunited.” The narrator, Abū Sa‘īd , adds, “I testify that I heard this hadith directly from the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم, and I testify that ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib fought them, and that I was with him. He instructed that we search for this man. He was eventually found and brought to ‘Alī, and I saw that that man appeared exactly as the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم had described him.”300