“La nabiyya ba‘di”: what does “there is no prophet after me” really mean?

In those days the world was in the hands of two superpowers. In the west was the Caesar of Rome; in the east, the Chosroes of Persia. To the small Muslim community of Madinah, they seemed unbeatable. At that time the Holy Prophet (sa) made a prophecy:

Now look at history. After the Holy Prophet (sa), did no other Caesar ever sit on the throne of Rome? They did, for many centuries. So was the Prophet’s (sa) word wrong? Never. The meaning was that there would be no more Chosroes or Caesar of that power and glory.

Keep this hadith in mind, and now look at that famous sentence: la nabiyya ba‘di, “there is no prophet after me.”

When you read the whole hadith

These three words are often quoted on their own. But in Sahih Bukhari the full hadith reads like this. Hazrat Abu Hurairah (ra) narrates that the Holy Prophet (sa) said:

Look at the context. The subject is that pattern among the Children of Israel in which, when one prophet died, another prophet came and took charge of governing the nation. The Holy Prophet (sa) is saying: it will not be like that after me; after me will come Khulafa. In other words, that chain of independent, ruling prophets would not continue right after him.

The language of “ba‘d” and “la”

The Arabic word ba‘d does not only mean “after” in time. The Quran itself has an example:

Does “after Allah” mean after Allah dies? We seek refuge in Allah from such a thought. Pointing to this very verse, Hazrat Shah Waliullah Muhaddith Dehlawi (rh) said that here ba‘d means “other than” or “against” (Qurratul Ainain, p. 206).

And the word la (no) does not always wipe out a whole category. The hadith of Caesar proves it. Hazrat Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (rh) wrote: reflecting on the hadith of Caesar and Chosroes, I understood that by saying “la nabiyya ba‘di” the Holy Prophet (sa) was speaking in the same way; prophethood has not vanished completely, only the prophethood that brings a new law has ended (Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyyah, vol. 3, p. 103).

Language has more uses like this. Talut’s soldiers said, “We have no power today against Jalut and his forces” (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:250). Did they have no power at all to see, hear or walk? No, they only lacked the power for that battle. Again, the Holy Prophet (sa) said, “There is no Hijrah after the conquest of Makkah” (Sahih Bukhari, Hadith 2783). Yet emigration in the way of Allah still goes on today; what ended was that special emigration from Makkah to Madinah.

How the scholars of the Ummah understood it

Hazrat Aishah (ra) said: “Say that he is Khatam an-Nabiyyin, but do not say that there is no prophet after him” (Ad-Durr al-Manthur, vol. 6, p. 618). Imam Abdul Wahhab Sha‘rani (rh) wrote that “there is no prophet and no messenger after me” only means that there is no law-bearing prophet after him (Al-Yawaqit wal-Jawahir, vol. 2, p. 35). Hazrat Shah Waliullah (rh) wrote that from this saying we know for certain that no prophet will come after him with a new law (Qurratul Ainain, p. 319).

Questions people ask

The words are clear: “There is no prophet after me.” Why explain them at all?

“When Caesar perishes, there will be no Caesar after him” sounds just as clear. Yet we all look at history and accept that it meant the end of that rank and power. There is no reason to take the same speaker’s same style of sentence in one sense in one place and in another sense somewhere else. Besides, the scholars who oppose Ahmadi Muslims also accept that Jesus (as) will come as a prophet. So they too do not take this sentence literally.

But the Bukhari hadith itself says Khulafa will come, not prophets?

Right, and Ahmadi Muslims fully accept this: after the Holy Prophet (sa), ruling prophets did not come one after another as among the Children of Israel; Khulafa came. But the same Holy Prophet (sa) called the Messiah of the last days “Nabiyyullah”, the Prophet of Allah, four times (Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Fitan), and said, “There is no prophet between me and him” (Sunan Abu Dawud, Hadith 4324). Both statements are true, and they fit together only when we understand this: after him there is no independent or law-bearing prophet, but he himself gave the news of a prophet who would be his follower.

Isn’t “ba‘d” meaning “other than” a forced meaning?

This meaning was not invented by any Ahmadi Muslim scholar. Hazrat Shah Waliullah (rh) gave it himself, pointing to verse 45:7 of the Quran. And consider this: even if we take it as “after”, the question remains, what kind of prophet? The scholars above answer with one voice: a law-bearing prophet. That is exactly what the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes.