# Gharqad

The gharqad (Arabic: غرقد) tree is mentioned in several hadiths that describe Islamic eschatology. It is considered likely that the gharqad tree is of the genus Lycium.

## The Hadith in Sunni eschatology

The Sunni Hadith collections of Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim give detailed accounts of a supernatural apocalyptic battle between good and evil, in which good shall prevail.
It is prophesied that before Judgement Day, the evil Dajjal will falsely claim to be the Jesus. A supernatural fire will shoot up from Hijaz that will illuminate much of the Middle East. The river Euphrates will part to reveal gold. But the biggest disaster will be when Gog and Magog are unleashed, because the barrier built by Dhu al-Qarnayn will have ruptured. And the Beast of the Earth will emerge. The Mahdi will lead a Muslim army against Dajjal and his followers in an apocalyptic battle known as al-Malhamat al-Kubra. After the Second Coming of Jesus, Jesus himself will kill the Dajjal.
The Dajjal is described by the Prophet Muhammad through revelation from Allah as The Great Deceiver who will come during the end of times. He will come and seemingly bring peace to all the lands and perform miracles.
The Dajjal will claim to be Allah, and perform miracles that only a ‘god’ would be able to perform, such as resurrection and bringing rain upon demand.
The Dajjal will claim to be Allah despite His physical deficiencies, such as having one eye. This claim however can only be false as God is complete and perfect in His names, attributes and actions, dajjal therefore cannot ever be God.
In addition, upon the head of The Dajjal will be written the letters 'كفر'.
It is prophesied that only the believers will be able to read these letters, whilst others will not and thus be deceived by his claims of divinity. According to one report, the Dajjal's army will be composed of 70,000 Jews from Isfahan, all armed, and 70,000 Tatars, and people from Khorasan (modern-day Afghanistan). Fayd al-Bari, a prominent Sunni commentary, explains that Jesus will only fight against those Jews who join the Dajjal's army, not all Jews around the world. A comment by 8th century Islamic traditionalist Naim ibn Hammad states that after al-Mahdi recovers the Ark of the Covenant, most Jews will join the Muslims in the fight against the tyrannical Dajjal.

### Hadith

In Sunni tradition, Abu Huraira reported that the Islamic prophet Muhammad said:
   The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him." – But the tree Gharqad will not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.
Narrations that mention this Hadith are: Sahih Muslim, 41:2922 (41:6984, 41:6985) and Sunan ibn Majah 36:152. Similar mentions occur in Sahih al-Bukhari, 4:56:791, Sahih Al-Bukhari 4:52:177, Sahih Muslim 41:6981, 41:6982, 41:6983
In Sahih Bukhari (book 56, Hadith 151), a similar Hadith is immediately followed by, and often "coupled" with the Hadith above:
   The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Turks.

## Sunni interpretation

Within Sunni Islam, these narrations are understood as part of Sunni eschatology's description of a great war at the end times against the forces of Dajjal which should occur after the second coming of Jesus according to Islam. Then, according to this eschatology, Jesus will lead an army of Muslims, some of whom are righteous Christians and righteous Jews converting to Islam in the eve of the battle, to fight the army of Dajjal consisting of Jews believing Dajjal is a god, and if a Jew of Dajjal's army hides behind a stone or a tree, this stone or tree will miraculously talk to Muslims to expose the Jew unless it is a Gharqad tree, because it is "their (the Jews') tree".
Sunni moderate writers debate the subject in eschatological terms, emphasizing that this should happen only in the end times after the second coming of Jesus in accordance with Sunni thought and should not damage current Islamic–Jewish relations.
According to Sunni interpretation in Ashrat al-sa’a (“the signs of the hour”) by Yusuf al-Wabil, the Dajjal’s army will be made up of Jews, Persians, Turks, Bedouins, and women. Traditions from Bukhari’s and Ibn Maja’s hadith collections also include Persians, Turks, and Bedouins as well as Jews.
The general message of the text is often alleged as a prophecy, but it does not appear in the Quran, which Muslims believe is Allah's revelation to Muhammad.
According to Memri TV, Yasir Qadhi described this text as referring to an end times war which is "a fight between good and evil" and that the text is "predictive and not prescriptive".

## Other Islamic sects

Not all Muslims accept all hadiths as reliable and may conclude somewhat different eschatology; most Shia Muslims reject Sunni hadiths as unreliable and have their own hadiths, such as The Four Books. While according to Karimov, Zaydi Shia may hold Sunni hadiths with high esteem, Zaydis have their own primary hadith traditions. While some Ibadi Muslims do not consider Sunni hadiths as reliable and rely on Tartib al-Musnad, Hoffman noted that contemporary Ibadis often approve of the standard Sunni collections.
Dajani Daoudi concluded that by comprehensive review of the Quran, no such hadith would exist since it openly contradicts Islamic faith and that Muslims believe a hadith is the word of man while the Quran is the word of God. Daoudi added that "this hadith" (that which he quoted) was collected 150 years after the death of Muhammad, that the authenticity of such a hadith is disputed, and that this particular hadith has become controversial for promoting anti-Jewish sentiments among Muslims.

## Critical assessment
### Insignificance of the tree in Judaism

Neither Nitraria nor Lycium have any sanctity in Judaism; they are not one of the four species of Sukkot, they are not one of the Seven Species of the Land of Israel and they are not one of the incense plants of the Torah; they are also not used for Havdalah and there is no Jewish tradition of eating their fruits in Tu BiShvat.
Furthermore, Lycium in mentioned in the Bible only once in a negative context in the Book of Judges, as Jotham compares his brother Avimelech, the self-proclaimed king of Shechem after he murdered his other brothers, to a Lycium, which is seen as a useless tree who can only cause harm.

### Fundamentalism around the concept

Freyer Stowasser describes 19th and early 20th century views about apocalyptic hadiths of the sort introduced by Muhammad Abduh and the young, pre-Salafiist Rashid Rida:
   The narratives on the Dajjal's end time reign and ultimate defeat were unreliable because of: questionable origin and transmitters, weak chains of hadith authentication, internal contradictions on this topic within the hadith corpus as a whole (that invalidate all of its parts), and the fact that these narratives contradict the Qur'anic text.
These modernist, deconstructionist approaches were unacceptable to Sunni clerical traditionalists. They have remained loyal to the more "literalist and inherited form" of apocalyptic hadiths, although they tend not to interpret them as calling for revolutionary political movements.

### Conspiracy and the Grand Mufti

Some Sunni Islamists who strongly advocate for the destruction of Israel have propagated a false allegation that Israeli Jews are planting millions of gharqad trees throughout Israel in preparation for a dire war.
This is entirely false, as forests planted by Israeli authorities are typically pine and cypress, with around 240 million such trees planted. Olive trees are planted to a lesser extent, but none of the Lycium or Nitraria are actively cultivated. Even in Israeli nurseries, no one seems to know the ‘tree of the Jew.’

### Hamas

An excerpt from a hadith attributed to Abu Huraira (one of Muhammad's companions) is famously quoted in the 1988 founding charter of Hamas, Article 7, stating that every stone and tree—except for the gharqad tree—will speak aloud to reveal if a Jew is taking cover, so that the Muslim army can find and kill the Jew.