Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār related: “Sāʿidah ibn ʿUbayd Allah told us, from Dāwūd ibn ʿAtāʾ, from Zayd ibn Aslam, from Ibn ʿUmar, who said:
During the Year of Famine ʿUmar sought rain through al-ʿAbbās and prayed: ‘O Allah, this is the uncle of Your Prophet; we turn to You through him, so send us rain.’ They had barely moved away before Allah granted them water.
ʿUmar then addressed the people and said: ‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ regarded al-ʿAbbās as a child regards his father: he venerated him, exalted him, and respected his oaths. Therefore, O people, follow the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in his treatment of his uncle al-ʿAbbās, and make him your means to Allah in the hardships that befall you.’
This report has reached us with an elevated chain in the Bāniyāsī fascicle. Dāwūd is weak (1).
Ibn Abī al-Zinād narrated—from Hishām, from his father, from ʿĀʾishah—who said: ‘I never saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ show reverence to anyone as he did to al-ʿAbbās or honour anyone as he honoured al-ʿAbbās.’ Its chain is acceptable.
It is also transmitted from ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAmr (2): The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: ‘Indeed Allah…’
Whenever drought struck, ʿUmar would seek rain through al-ʿAbbas b. ʿAbd al-Muttalib, saying: “O Allah, we used to beseech You through our Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—and You would send us rain; now we beseech You through the uncle of our Prophet, so send us rain.” It would then rain.
Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar states in Fath al-Bari that al-Zubayr b. Bakkar, in his Ansab, quoted the exact wording of al-ʿAbbas’s supplication and identified its date. With his own chain of transmission he relates that, when ʿUmar sought rain through al-ʿAbbas, the latter said: “O Allah, no calamity descends except because of sin, and nothing is removed except by repentance. The people have turned to You through me because of my closeness to Your Prophet. Here are our hands raised to You in sin and our forelocks bowed to You in repentance, so send us abundant rain.” The sky then poured down like mountains, the land became fertile, and the people revived. This occurred in the Year of the Ashes (ʿĀm al-Ramāda), in the eighteenth year after the Hijra.
(1) Al-Hākim records the report in al-Mustadrak, 3:334. Al-Dhahabī there judges Dāwud “abandoned”; in al-Mīzān he cites Aḥmad: “worthless,” and al-Bukhārī: “his ḥadīth is repudiated.” Al-Banīyāsī is an attribution to Banīyās, a town in the Ghawr near Palestine. The transmitter is Abū ʿAbd Allāh Mālik b. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. al-Farrāʾ al-Baghdādī, who died in 485/1092 during the great Baghdad fire in Jumādā al-Ākhira of that year, aged eighty-seven; see al-Muntaẓam, 9:69, and al-ʿIbar, 3:308–309.
(2) In the printed edition the final wāw of the name ʿAmr has been omitted.