Question:
As salamu alaykum, please could you give the Ahlus Sunnah interpretation of this hadith jazakallah khair. :
I heard the Prophet saying, “There will be twelve Muslim rulers (who will rule all the Islamic world).” He then said a sentence which I did not hear. My father said, “All of them (those rulers) will be from Quraish.”
Sahih Al-Bukhari No. 6756 – Narrated by Jabir bin Samura
Answer:
wa `alaykum as-Salam
According to Qadi Iyad in Sharh Sahih Muslim and Ibn Hajar in Fath al-Bari these twelve are the strongest caliphs politically and those that mustered the Ummah’s general agreement even if there was dissent in the process, and Ibn Hajar listed them as:
1-4: The Rightly Guided Caliphs (Allah be well-pleased with them)
5: Mu`awiya (Allah be well-pleased with him)
6: his son, Yazid
7: `Abd al-Malik b. Marwan
8-11: his four sons, Walid, Sulayman, Yazid, Hisham
12: al-Walid b. Yazid b. `Abd al-Malik
May Allah have mercy on them and unite the Ummah under a just Caliph in our time.
Hajj Gibril Haddad
Wa `alaikum as salaam,
There doesn’t appear to be any agreed upon interpretation of this hadith. In fact, some scholars such has Ibn Arabi (Sharh Sunan Tirmidhi), Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (Fath al-Bari) and Imam Nawawi (Sharh Sahih Muslim) explain that it is not a well-understood hadith.
The Sunni `ulama almost unanimously agree that the Khulifah Rashidoon are the first four imams being referred to.
Imam As-Suyuti gives his interpretation in “Tarikh al-Khulafah” that the twelve rulers are:
1-4: Khulafah Rashidoon
5: Imam Hasan (ra)
6: Mu`awiya (ra)
7: Ibn Zubayr (ra)
8: `Umar bin `Abd al-`Aziz (ra)
on top of these he adds maybe Mahdi the Abbasid and Tahir `Abbasi and he mentions the last as being Imam Mahdi (as). This leaves one unaccounted for.
And Allah knows best,
Yusuf Hussain