How can the Hadith "No time comes upon you except that which follows it is worse than it" be reconciled with the Hadith "Is there any evil after this good? He said: Yes. He said: Is there any good after this evil? He said: Yes, but it will be tainted with smoke," taking into consideration examples such as the return of Saladin Al-Ayyubi to Sunni Egypt after the rule of the Shi'ite Ubaydis?

The hadith (definition), "No era comes but the one after it is worse than it," is general and does not preclude the existence of specific eras that are better than those preceding them, such as the period of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz or the Mahdi. The intent is that evil generally increases in every age, but this does not negate the existence of exceptional periods in which goodness appears. The hadith may also refer to preferring the entirety of one era over the entirety of another. Thus, the era of Al-Hajjaj, which contained Companions, was better than the era of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, which was devoid of them, because the presence of the Companions elevates the goodness of an era.