This entry examines two narrations — Sahih al-Bukhari 1411 and Sahih Muslim 157c — foretelling a time of wealth so abundant that a person offering charity finds no one to accept it. It documents a reported early partial correspondence, a long-run economic trend, and the plain fact that the foretold terminal condition has not been reached.
The source text
“O people! Give in charity as a time will come upon you when a person will wander about with his object of charity and will not find anybody to accept it, and one (who will be requested to take it) will say, 'If you had brought it yesterday, I would have taken it, but today I am not in need of it.'”
Sahih al-Bukhari 1411 · Grading: sahih (Bukhari-Muslim by definition)
“The Last Hour will not come before wealth becomes abundant and overflowing, so much so that a man takes Zakat out of his property and cannot find anyone to accept it from him, and till the land of Arabia reverts to meadows and rivers.”
Sahih Muslim 157c · Grading: sahih (Bukhari-Muslim by definition)
What was understood in the seventh century
Both narrations are sahih. In Bukhari's version the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) urges people to give charity now, because a time will come when a man will wander about with his alms and find nobody to accept them; Muslim's version ties the condition to the approach of the Hour, with wealth so overflowing that a man cannot find anyone to take his zakat.
Seventh-century Arabia was a subsistence economy repeatedly visited by famine, and the Qur'an and hadith literature assume a permanent class of the poor entitled to zakat. The idea that alms-givers would one day search in vain for anyone poor enough to accept charity inverted the audience's entire economic experience. Zakat itself presupposes that experience: an obligatory transfer from the wealthy to enumerated categories of recipients, its whole machinery assumes the poor will always be found. A prophecy that the machinery would one day idle for lack of recipients was therefore a statement about the end of an economic order, not a variation within it.
The fulfillment record
Muslim historians report a partial early correspondence under the Umayyad caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (r. 717–720): according to accounts transmitted by later chroniclers, zakat collectors in some provinces could not find eligible recipients. Commentators have long cited this as a foretaste rather than the final fulfillment, since the hadith ties the condition to the approach of the Hour. His short reign became proverbial in Muslim memory for just administration and general sufficiency.
On a longer horizon, economic historians estimate that the share of humanity living in extreme poverty fell from roughly three-quarters in 1820 to under 10 percent by the 2010s — an abundance of wealth without precedent in recorded history (see Our World in Data). The trend's scale is easy to understate: for most of recorded history, most human beings lived at subsistence, and the retreat of extreme poverty is a development of the last two centuries.
What has not occurred, in any era, is the hadith's terminal scene: a giver wandering with alms and finding no one anywhere in need. Absolute poverty plainly still exists. This entry is therefore framed as partially corresponded and still open — an observed trend toward the foretold condition, not a fulfillment of it.
Considerations and counterpoints
Critics point out that predicting future prosperity is a common feature of religious eschatologies and requires no special knowledge; that the reports about Umar II come from later chronicles whose details are hard to verify; and that global wealth today coexists with hundreds of millions of people in severe poverty, so the hadith's scenario remains unfulfilled on its own terms. Defenders of the entry accept that last point; it is why the sign is framed here as open rather than fulfilled, with the observed trend recorded and the terminal condition left unclaimed.
Credibility rating: Tier 2 · Interpretive — Authentic and clearly worded, with a documented early partial correspondence and a plausible long-run trend, but the terminal condition (charity finding no takers) has not been reached, keeping it interpretation-dependent.