There were many Prophets other than the ones we tell you about in this book. The ones we cited are the ones who are famous in the nation of Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be upon him. Most of these were cited by name in the Qur’an. Some of the salaf (the Muslims of the first three Islamic centuries) attributed Prophethood to other than the ones we have cited such as: Ash^iya, Armiya, Hizqil and Danyal.
In Surat Fatir, verse 24, God said that every nation had a Prophet. This indicates the large number of the Prophets.
Ibn Hibban related that Prophet Muhammad said that the Prophets were 124,000; 313 of whom were Messengers. However, there is a difference in opinion about the credibility of some narrators of this hadith. For this reason, it is not used to deduce rules in matters pertaining to the belief. There is another narration by Ibn Jarir, which states that there are 8,000 Prophets, but this narration is not confirmed.
Some of the scholars said that the right methodology is not to specify a number of Prophets, to be on the safe side. This way one avoids including those who are not among them, and excluding from the Prophets those who are among them.
We are making note of this here, at this point in the book, because all the Prophets whom we do not know about definitely came before Prophet Jesus. Prophet Jesus is the next Prophet to tell about.
Definitely Prophet Muhammad is the last Prophet to be born as stated in the Qur’an and the hadith. Also we know that definitely no Prophet is between Prophet Jesus and Prophet Muhammad because of the hadith of Prophet Muhammad stating it. Hence, we can logically conclude that all those many Prophets we do not know about were before Prophet Jesus.
