One question regarding the dajjal is his age, because there are seemingly conflicting ahadith that imply he was alive during the time of the prophet (saws) and others that say He will be born in the future.
The first hadith is the famous hadith of Tamim Dari, a Christian who survived a shipwreck on an island along with his crew mates and ended up meeting the Dajjal and his spy al Jassaasa.
Here is the hadith in full, something interesting, when they ask him who he is the English says I am al Dajjal, while the Arabic says I am al Massih, the anointed one, the translators had no right to do this.
Amir b. Sharahil Sha’bi Sha’b Hamdan reported that he asked Fatima, daughter of Qais and sister of ad-Dahhak b. Qais and she was the first amongst the emigrant women:
Narrate to me a hadith which you had heard directly from Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) and there is no extra link in between them. She said: Very well, if you like, I am prepared to do that, and he said to her: Well, do It and narrate that to me. She said: I married the son of Mughira and he was a chosen young man of Quraish at that time, but he fell as a martyr in the first Jihad (fighting) on the side of Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ). When I became a widow, ‘Abd al-Rahman b. Auf, one amongst the group of the Companions of Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ), sent me the proposal of marriage. Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) also sent me such a message for his freed slave Usama b. Zaid. And it had been conveyed to me that Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) had said (about Usama): He who loves me should also love Usama. When Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) talked to me (about this matter), I said: My affairs are in your hand. You may marry me to anyone whom you like. He said: You better shift now to the house of Umm Sharik, and Umm Sharik was a rich lady from amongst the Ansar. She spent generously for the cause of Allah and entertained guests very hospitably. I said: Well, I will do as you like.
He said: Do not do that for Umm Sharik is a woman who is very frequently visited by guests and I do not like that your head may be uncovered or the cloth may be removed from your shank and the strangers may catch sight of them which you abhor. You better shift to the house of your cousin ‘Abdullah b. ‘Amr b. Umm Maktum and he is a person of the Bani Fihr branch of the Quraish, and he belonged to that tribe (to which Fatima) belonged. So I shifted to that house, and when my period of waiting was over, I heard the voice of an announcer making an announcement that the prayer would be observed in the mosque (where) congregational prayer (is observed). So I set out towards that mosque and observed prayer along with Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) and I was in the row of the women which was near the row of men. When Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) had finished his prayer, he sat on the pulpit smiling and said: Every worshipper should keep sitting at his place. He then said: Do you know why I had asked you to assemble? They said: Allah and His Messenger know best. He said: By Allah. I have not made you assemble for exhortation or for a warning, but I have detained you here, for Tamim Dari, a Christian, who came and accepted Islam, told me something, which agrees with what I was telling, you about the Dajjal. He narrated to me that he had sailed in a ship along with thirty men of Bani Lakhm and Bani Judham and had been tossed by waves in the ocean for a month. Then these (waves) took them (near) the land within the ocean (island) at the time of sunset.
They sat in a small side-boat and entered that island. There was a beast with long thick hair (and because of these) they could not distinguish his face from his back. They said: Woe to you, who can you be? Thereupon it said: I am al-Jassasa. They said: What is al-Jassasa? And it said: O people, go to this person in the monastery as he is very much eager to know about you. He (the narrator) said: When it named a person for us we were afraid of it lest it should be a devil. Then we hurriedly went on till we came to that monastery and found a well-built person there with his hands tied to his neck and having iron shackles between his two legs up to the ankles. We said: Woe be upon thee, who are you? And he said: You would soon come to know about me. but tell me who are you. We said: We are people from Arabia and we embarked upon a boat but the sea-waves had been driving us for one month and they brought as near this island.
We got Into the side-boats and entered this island and here a beast met us with profusely thick hair and because of the thickness of his hair his face could not be distinguished from his back. We said: Woe be to thee, who are you? It said: I am al- Jassasa. We said: What is al-Jassasa? And it said: You go to this very person in the monastery for he is eagerly waiting for you to know about you. So we came to you in hot haste fearing that that might be the Devil. He (that chained person) said: Tell me about the date-palm trees of Baisan. We said: About what aspect of theirs do you seek information? He said: I ask you whether these trees bear fruit or not. We said: yes. Thereupon he said: I think these would not bear fruits. He said: Inform me about the lake of Tabariyya? We said: Which aspect of it do you want to know? He said: Is there water in it? They said: There is abundance of water in it. Thereupon he said: I think it would soon become dry.
He again said: Inform me about the spring of Zughar. They said: Which aspect of it you want to know? He (the chained person) said: Is there water in it and does it irrigate (the land)? We said to him: Yes, there is abundance of water in it and the inhabitants (of Medina) irrigate (land) with the help of it, He said: Inform me about the unlettered Prophet; what has he done? We said: He has come out from Mecca and has settled In Yathrib (Medina). He said: Do the Arabs fight against him? We said: Yes. He said: How did he deal with them? We informed him that he had overcome those in his neighbourhood and they had submitted themselves before him.
Thereupon he said to us: Has it actually happened? We said: Yes. Thereupon he said: If it is so that is better for them that they should show obedience to him. I am going to tell you about myself and I am Dajjal and would be soon permitted to get out and so I shall get out and travel in the land, and will not spare any town where I would not stay for forty nights except Mecca and Medina as these two (places) are prohibited (areas) for me and I would not make an attempt to enter any one of these two. An angel with a sword in his hand would confront me and would bar my way and there would be angels to guard every passage leading to it; then Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) striking the pulpit with the help of the end of his staff said: This implies Taiba meaning Medina. Have I not, told you an account (of the Dajjal) like this? ‘The people said: Yes, and this account narrated by Tamim Dari was liked by me for it corroborates the account which I gave to you in regard to him (Dajjal) at Medina and Mecca. Behold he (Dajjal) is in the Syrian sea (Mediterranean) or the Yemen sea (Arabian sea). Nay, on the contrary, he is in the east, he is in the east, he is in the east, and he pointed with his hand towards the east. I (Fatima bint Qais) said: I preserved it in my mind (this narration from Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ). (Muslim)
If the Dajjal was alive in the prophets time then what does this hadith mean:
“His father will be tall and thin and his nose will be pointed like a beak, while his mother will be fat with two long hands. They will both remain thirty years without a child. After thirty years, a son with visual impairment in one eye, biting teeth and of little benefit will be born to them whose heart will remain awake while his eyes sleep (Meaning he witnesses ghayb 24 hours a day from birth).” (Tirmidhi)
The first and most obvious explanation is that because the hadith is daeef, something was lost in the transmission like the hadith changing from past tense to future tense. One explanation I have heard which i don’t think is correct is that Tamim ad dari was relating a dream to the prophet (saws), but everything in the hadith says otherwise, some of Rasul Allah’s companions have spoken to me regarding this and we should take these ahadith literally, He was a man and He was alive during the time of the prophet (saws) imprisoned on an island.
The island is in the Arabian see and from the description given by the prophet that is directly east of Madina and the description of Tamim ad Dari that he crashed on an Island near the shore and the Dajjal was chained in a monastery, religious building, it is not that hard to find out which Islam because we know them all and the history of each.
The Island that fits the description of everything perfectly is Astola Island, it contains an old Hindu monastery dedicated to the god of war, if you draw a line east of Madina it is just north of that, and it is fairly close to the place he will emerge from in the future, Iran.
That leaves us with one conclusion the Dajjal has long since left his prison and is in the world preparing for a time where he can emerge and dominate it with an economic system that will trap nations, and a technology that will trap people psychologically and spiritually.
Another thing you have to consider is that if he is long lived and he is imprisoned, Iron chains rust and weaken so time would have been on his side and that is reasonable proof he is no longer on the island.
Beside this another proof is that Rasul Allah (saws) asked His Ummah from His (saws) time to ours to seek protection from the fintah of the Dajjal, if He is chained on another Island hidden behind magical clouds or an invisibility barrier (Allah did him no such favours), then what Fitnah was the Ummah seeking protection from over the past 1400 years every week and every Friday.
If he is loose in the world then we can know him by his work, above all he is a sahir, then a child possessed by Jinn who know sihr, the proof of his presence in the world should be identifying any place where people ruled using the occult, that is the only thing that will forward his agenda, getting people to adopt his ways (see our article for this history, “The Wisdom Underpinning Punishment and Hell”. The occult group I mention are from Iraq, a place near where the Dajjal was imprisoned and where He will emerge from, they are responsible for spreading this fitnah to Europe and its rulers. Wa Llahu Allam]
This leaves us with one more question how has he been able to stay alive all this time, this is one constant that everyone agrees on, he has been alive for more than 1400 years.
The Dajjal is born to Jewish parents, that means he is not older than the Jewish religion and he began life as a Jew, it may be possible he was alive during the time the Jews were killing their prophets and that corrupted him, it may be possible he was among the exiled tribes of Judah since the location of his imprisonment places him near the place of their exile, Afghanistan.
One thing to consider is that it was the Jews of his tribe who imprisoned him on this remote Island, their solution for him after they recognized him. Something we can safely conclude is that the Dajjal is a Jewsih Kafir from the old days when they were challenging their prophets.
I think the condition he was born with, that his heart sees ghayb 24 hours a day, and his self and soul delving into ghayb gave him long life, for normal people there is a barzakh/veil between them and ghayb, that Allah placed on all people, stopping them from seeing it without impedance, this veil if your self-approaches it and tires to pierce it you will go insane because it is responsible for insanity in people.
Because we are not speaking about abstract things but things that affect us physiologically, the deeper you go into ghayb the exposure you have to its forces and power could be rejuvenating his body keeping it ageless, like a person relying on energy in the universe rather than food transformed into energy by the body, to keep him alive.
The Prophets and Awliyah are similar in their vision of ghayb, their bodies have formed deep connections with ghayb and lived upon this connection, the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “Verily, Allah has forbidden the Earth to consume the bodies of the Prophets.” (Sunan Abu Dawud (1047), Sunan al-Nasa’i (1374), and Sunan Ibn Majah (1636).)
“According to Ibn `Abd al-Barr, the hadeeth of the Prophet (peace be upon him) in which he said, “Verily, Allah has forbidden the Earth to consume the bodies of the Prophets” also applies to the martyrs (among the companions) as well. He then relates an account where the Khaliph Mu`awiyah wanted to cause the spring at the base of Mount Uhud to flow. The Khaliph, therefore, ordered a public statement to be made that those who had a deceased relative in the vicinity should undertake to exhume his body and relocate it. Jabir was one of those who went forth to exhume the bodies.”
He said: “We went forth and exhumed the bodies, finding them fresh and flexible…When a spade struck the finger of one of the bodies, drops of blood issued forth.”
Az-Zarqani comments that this event took place forty years after the Battle of Uhud.
ثُمَّ بَدَا لَهُم مِّن بَعْدِ مَا رَأَوُا الْآيَاتِ لَيَسْجُنُنَّهُ حَتَّىٰ حِينٍ