while the women kept tugging at me and saying, “Kiss your brother.”
Al-Zubayr cited this story without providing a chain of transmission (isnād).
A number of our teachers related to us: Ibn Tabarzad told us; Ibn al-Ḥusayn told us; Ibn Ghaylān told us; Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī told us; Muḥammad ibn Bishr ibn Maṭar narrated to us; Shaybān narrated to us; Mubārak ibn Faḍālah, on the authority of al-Ḥasan, from al-Aḥnaf ibn Qays, said: “I heard al-ʿAbbās say:
‘The son whom Abraham was commanded to sacrifice was Isaac.’ (1)
Al-Wāqidī reports—through Ibn Abī Sabrah, Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh, ʿIkrimah, and Ibn ʿAbbās—that:
“Al-ʿAbbās accepted Islam in Mecca before the Battle of Badr; at that same time his wife, Umm al-Faḍl, embraced Islam with him, and he remained in Mecca. Nothing concerning the Messenger of Allah ﷺ escaped his notice.” (2)
(1) Mubarak b. Fadala was a known mudallis and in this chain he narrates with the ambiguous ʿan-formula; the report is therefore unsound. The claim that the sacrificial son (*al-dhabih*) was Isaac is a discredited view, taken from Jewish scholars and their writings without any valid proof. The consensus of the Companions, the Successors and those after them is that the son was Ismaʿil. As Ibn Kathir states in al-Bidaya, 1/158-159, the Qurʾan virtually spells this out: after relating the sacrifice it says, “We gave him the glad tidings of Isaac, a prophet among the righteous.” Reading this clause as contemporaneous with the sacrifice is forced and rests solely on Israʾiliyyat. Their scripture has been altered, especially here, for it says that God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his “only son,” and in some translations, “his first-born, Isaac.” The insertion of “Isaac” is a fabricated interpolation, for he was neither the only nor the first-born—Ismaʿil was. The motive was jealousy toward the Arabs of the Hijaz, from whose line came the Messenger of Allah, whereas Isaac was the father of Jacob (Israel) to whom they trace their descent. Wishing to transfer this honor to themselves, they distorted the divine text. See also Ibn al-Qayyim, Zad al-Maʿad, 1/71, 75 (our critical edition), for an extended treatment.
(2) Meaning: “it is not hidden.” The verb *ghabi* ʿan/ʿala/minhu means “to be concealed from someone,” hence *ghaba* and *ghabawa* (“ignorance”). A poet said: “in a land where even the expert guide yaghba (is perplexed).” In the hadith on fasting, “fa-in ghubi ʿalaykum” means “if it is obscured for you,” and some narrate it in the intensive form *ghabbi*.