The Man Who Killed Ninety-Nine Souls: Islam’s Greatest Story of Hope

If there is one story in the Sunnah that was told for the sinner who thinks he has gone too far, it is this one. The Prophet ﷺ narrated it about a man who lived before this ummah — a man whose record was not a handful of sins, not a season of heedlessness, but ninety-nine murders. And yet the story does not end in despair. It ends with angels disputing over him, a measurement taken between two lands, and the angels of mercy carrying him away.

This article retells the story exactly as it is recorded in Sahih Muslim, quote by quote, so that nothing is added to it and nothing is taken away. A sister article explores the door of repentance in Islam and the day that door closes; here, the focus is narrower and more personal: what happened to the man who killed ninety-nine souls, and what his story says to anyone who believes his own record has shut him out.

1. Ninety-Nine: A Record No One Would Defend

The story is narrated by Abu Sa’id al-Khudri, who reported that Allah’s Messenger ﷺ said:

“There was a person before you who had killed ninety-nine persons and then made an inquiry about the learned persons of the world (who could show him the way to salvation).” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

Notice where the story begins. It does not begin with the murders as entertainment, nor with any detail of how they were committed; the narration passes over all of that in a single sentence. What the narration lingers on is what the man did next: he began to ask. After ninety-nine killings, something in him was still searching for “the way to salvation,” and he went looking for the most learned people on earth to show it to him.

That search is the first hopeful sign in the story, and it appears before any scholar, any verdict, any journey. A heart that had become entirely dead would not have asked at all. The question itself — is there a way back for someone like me? — is the thread the whole story hangs on.

2. The Monk Who Said No

He was directed first to a monk — a man known for worship, though not, as events would show, for knowledge. The killer laid his whole record before him without softening it:

“He was directed to a monk. He came to him and told him that he had killed ninety-nine persons and asked him whether there was any scope for his repentance to be accepted. He said: No.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

One word: No. No door, no path, no mercy wide enough. It is worth pausing on how this answer was received by a man who had nothing left to protect. He had come confessing the worst record imaginable, asking whether repentance had any scope for him at all, and the answer he received closed the only door he knew of. The monk’s answer was given in the name of religion, but it was an answer without knowledge of how vast Allah’s mercy is — and the story will shortly show a learned man giving precisely the opposite answer to the same question.

The lesson embedded here is one the story makes without commentary: despair is not humility. Telling a sinner that Allah cannot forgive him is not caution; in this narration it is the prelude to one more killing.

3. Despair Completes the Hundred

The narration records the immediate consequence of that closed door in the plainest terms:

“He killed him also and thus completed one hundred.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

The hundredth victim was the man who told him there was no hope. Read the sequence carefully: it is not presented as an excuse for the killing — murder is murder, and the story never softens it. But the narration deliberately places the monk’s “No” and the hundredth killing side by side, so the reader cannot miss the connection. A man told that repentance has no scope for him has, by that logic, nothing to lose; and a man with nothing to lose is the most dangerous man alive.

And yet — this is the turn that makes the story what it is — even after the hundred, the man asked again. The search that began after ninety-nine did not die with the hundredth killing.

4. The Scholar’s Answer: What Stands Between You and Repentance?

He asked once more for the most learned person available, and this time he was sent to a scholar. The question he brought was heavier than before — a hundred now, not ninety-nine — and he asked it in exactly the same terms:

“He then asked about the learned persons of the earth and he was directed to a scholar, and he told him that he had killed one hundred persons and asked him whether there was any scope for his repentance to be accepted.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

The scholar’s answer is the hinge of the entire story:

“He said: Yes; what stands between you and the repentance?” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

Yes — and then a question thrown back at the questioner. The scholar does not ask for the details of the hundred killings. He does not set a waiting period or demand a down payment of good deeds. He treats the barrier as imaginary: what stands between you and repentance? Nothing — nothing but the man’s own assumption that something must. The same record, the same question, two opposite answers: the difference between the monk and the scholar was knowledge, and the difference knowledge made was the difference between despair and hope. This is why expecting good of Allah is itself an act of faith; our article on thinking well of Allah explores that theme from the texts.

5. The Prescription: A New Land and New Company

The scholar did not stop at “Yes.” He gave the repentance a direction — a concrete, physical step the man could take with his feet:

“You better go to such and such land; there are people devoted to prayer and worship and you also worship along with them and do not come to the land of yours since it was an evil land (for you).” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

Every part of this prescription matters. He is not told to stay where he is and simply feel sorry; he is told to move. He is not sent into isolation; he is sent toward people — people “devoted to prayer and worship,” whose company would carry his new life. And he is warned against returning: the land he came from is named an evil land for him, because it was the setting in which a hundred people died at his hands, and returning to it would mean returning to everything that produced the old man.

Repentance, in this story, is therefore not only an inward turning. It has an address. The scholar joins the change of heart to a change of place and a change of companions — and the man obeys all of it at once. He sets out.

6. Halfway There, Death Arrived

The journey was not completed. The narration gives the man no arrival, no years of worship among the pious, no long record of reformed behaviour to present. He died on the road:

“So he went away and he had hardly covered half the distance when death came to him and there was a dispute between the angels of mercy and the angels of punishment.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

“He had hardly covered half the distance.” His repentance, measured in deeds, consisted of a question asked twice, a verdict believed, and a road half-walked. He never reached the land of worship. He never prayed a single prayer alongside its people. Everything he intended lay ahead of him, unperformed — and it is precisely at this point, with his record at its worst and his new life barely begun, that heaven begins to dispute over him. The dispute itself is the first announcement that the case is not closed: a soul beyond all hope would not need to be disputed over.

7. Two Claims Over One Man

The two parties state their claims, and the narration preserves both of them word for word:

“The angels of mercy said: This man has come as a … remorseful to Allah and the angels of punishment said: He has done no good at all.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

Both claims are, on their own terms, accurate. The angels of punishment state a fact: he had done no good at all — a hundred murders and not one completed act of worship to set against them. The angels of mercy state a different fact: he had come, penitent and remorseful, turned toward Allah. The whole story concentrates itself into this single exchange. Which fact decides a man’s fate: what he has done, or the direction in which he finally turned?

The narration does not answer by argument. It answers by sending a judge.

8. The Measurement of the Two Lands

A third angel arrives, in human form, to decide between the two parties — and his decision takes the form of a measurement:

“Then there came another angel in the form of a human being in order to decide between them. He said: You measure the land to which he has drawn near. They measured it and found him nearer to the land where he intended to go (the land of piety), and so the angels of mercy took possession of it.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

The criterion is astonishing in its mercy: not how far he had come from the evil land in years of obedience, but which land his body lay nearer to when he died. He had set out toward the land of piety, and that orientation — measured, in the end, in mere distance — was enough for the angels of mercy to take possession of him. The man is judged by where he was heading. His intention had an address, and he died closer to it than to the life he had left.

Let the weight of that settle. A hundred murders stood on one side of the scale; on the other side stood a turned heart and half a road. The narration leaves no doubt about which side heaven weighed.

9. A Span, a Crawl, and the Company He Was Counted Among

The narration of Abu Sa’id al-Khudri carries one more detail, transmitted at its close — the man’s final movement as death reached him:

“Qatada said that Hasan told him that it was said to them that as death approached him, he crawled upon his chest (and managed) to slip in the land of mercy.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih)

Dying, he dragged himself forward on his chest — toward the land of piety, away from the land of sin — so that even his last motion on earth was a motion toward Allah. The parallel narration of the same story in Sahih Muslim fills in how fine the margin was, and what it earned him:

“he was found to be nearer to the village where pious persons were living equal to the Space of a span and he was thus included among them” (Sahih Muslim 2766b — Sahih)

Nearer by the space of a span — roughly a hand’s breadth. That was the whole margin. And on the strength of it, “he was thus included among them”: counted, at the end, not with the people of the evil land he had fled, but with the pious people he had never even reached. He died a traveller between two lands, and he was written down among the people of the better one.

10. The Verse That Seals the Story: Do Not Despair

The Quran states, as a standing address to every sinner, exactly what the scholar told the killer. Allah commands His Prophet ﷺ to announce it on His behalf:

۞ قُلْ يَـٰعِبَادِىَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَسْرَفُوا۟ عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِهِمْ لَا تَقْنَطُوا۟ مِن رَّحْمَةِ ٱللَّهِ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَغْفِرُ ٱلذُّنُوبَ جَمِيعًا ۚ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلْغَفُورُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ

“Say (on My behalf), “O servants of Mine who have acted recklessly against their own selves, do not despair of Allah’s mercy. Surely, Allah will forgive all sins. Surely, He is the One who is the Most-Forgiving, the Very-Merciful.” (Quran 39:53)

Every phrase of this verse reads like a commentary on the story. “Servants of Mine who have acted recklessly against their own selves” — if any man ever acted recklessly against his own soul, it was the man with a hundred killings behind him. “Do not despair of Allah’s mercy” — the very despair the monk had preached, and the very despair the scholar had dismantled. “Allah will forgive all sins” — all, without an exception clause, sealed with two of His names: the Most-Forgiving, the Very-Merciful.

The story and the verse belong together. The story shows the verse at work on the worst record the Prophet ﷺ ever narrated; the verse states the principle the story embodies. For the wider picture of that mercy — how Allah receives those who return to Him — see our article on the mercy of Allah in Islam. And for the practical path of turning back — its conditions and its steps — our guide to repentance (tawbah) in Islam gathers the texts together.

What, then, does the man who killed ninety-nine souls say to us? He says that the size of a sinner’s past is not the measure of his future. He says that the worst answer a broken man can be given is “No,” and that the answer of knowledge — the answer of the Quran itself — is: what stands between you and repentance? He died with nothing to show but a turned heart, a changed direction, and a span’s worth of nearness to the people of righteousness. It was enough for the angels of mercy to take him. No reader of this story is carrying a record heavier than his.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. How many people did the man in the story kill? He killed ninety-nine persons, and after the monk told him there was no scope for his repentance, the narration says: “He killed him also and thus completed one hundred.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih) His final total was therefore one hundred — and even then, the story does not end in despair.

Q2. Why did the scholar say his repentance could be accepted when the monk had said no? The scholar answered the identical question with the opposite word: “He said: Yes; what stands between you and the repentance?” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih) His reply agrees with Allah’s own announcement: “do not despair of Allah’s mercy. Surely, Allah will forgive all sins” (Quran 39:53). The monk’s “No” had no such text behind it — and it led directly to the hundredth killing.

Q3. Why did the scholar tell him to leave his own land? Because the land was part of the disease. The scholar directed him to a land where “there are people devoted to prayer and worship,” told him to worship along with them, and warned him: “do not come to the land of yours since it was an evil land (for you)” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih). Repentance, in this prescription, includes changing one’s place and one’s company, not only one’s feelings.

Q4. Why did the angels of mercy take him when he had done no good at all? The angels of punishment made exactly that argument — “He has done no good at all.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih) — but the deciding measurement found him nearer to the land he intended to reach: “They measured it and found him nearer to the land where he intended to go (the land of piety), and so the angels of mercy took possession of it.” (Sahih Muslim 2766a — Sahih) He was taken for the direction he had turned and died travelling in, remorseful toward Allah. One practical first step for anyone turning back after a sin is the prayer taught for that moment; see the prayer after committing a sin.

Q5. My sins feel too many for forgiveness. What does this story say to me? It says that a man with one hundred murders was met, at his death, by angels disputing over him — and was taken by the angels of mercy, nearer to the land of piety by a span and “thus included among them” (Sahih Muslim 2766b — Sahih). And it says that Allah addresses people exactly like you by name: “O servants of Mine who have acted recklessly against their own selves, do not despair of Allah’s mercy” (Quran 39:53). The scholar’s question in the story is the question this story asks every reader: what stands between you and repentance?