Al-Ḥākim said: Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar related to us: I heard Ibn Khuzaymah being asked, “From where did you obtain your knowledge?” He answered, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘Zamzam water is for whatever purpose it is drunk (1).’ When I drank it, I asked Allah for useful knowledge.”
Al-Ḥākim said: I heard Abū Bakr ibn Bālūwayh say, “I heard Abū Bakr ibn Isḥāq being asked, ‘Why do you not have your hair shaved in the bathhouse?’ He replied, ‘I do not have any reliable report that the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—ever entered a bathhouse, nor that he ever had his hair shaved. A bond-maid of mine merely trims my hair with scissors.’”
Al-Ḥākim said: I questioned Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl ibn Muḥammad about his grandfather. He told me that the man never kept anything back if he could help it; instead, he spent his wealth on the people of knowledge. He did not know the sanjah (2) measure of weight, nor could he tell the difference between ten and twenty. More than once we would take ten from him and he would imagine it was five.
Al-Ḥākim said: I heard Abū Bakr al-Qaffāl say, “Ibn Ṣāʿid wrote to Ibn Khuzaymah…”
(1) Reported in Tarikh Baghdad 10/166, and also by Ibn Majah (3062), Ahmad 3/357, and al-Bayhaqi 5/148, through the chain of Abdullah ibn al-Muammal, from Muhammad ibn al-Munkadir, from Jabir: the Prophet ﷺ said, “The water of Zamzam is for whatever purpose it is drunk.” Abdullah is weak, yet he is not the sole transmitter; the report is corroborated by Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi al-Mawali and Ibrahim ibn Tahman, both from Abu al-Zubayr, from Jabir, in al-Bayhaqi 5/202 with a sound chain. Hence the hadith is authentic. It was declared sahih by al-Hakim, al-Mundhiri, and al-Dumyati, and graded hasan by Ibn Hajar.
In Sahih Muslim (4473) Jabir narrates from Abu Dharr that Zamzam “is food that satisfies.” Al-Tayalisi 2/158 and al-Bayhaqi 5/148 add: “and a cure for illness,” with an authentic chain.
Al-Tirmidhi (963), al-Hakim 1/485, and al-Bayhaqi 5/202 relate from Aisha that “she used to carry Zamzam water and would say that the Prophet ﷺ used to carry it.” Al-Tirmidhi judged the report hasan, and this is correct. Al-Bukhari, in al-Tarikh al-Kabir 3/189, records her statement in these words: “She carried Zamzam water in glass containers and said, ‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to transport it in skins and small flasks; he would pour it over the sick and give them to drink.’”
(2) Al-Qamus and Lisan al-Arab state that sanjat al-mizan may also be pronounced sunjatuhu and that the form with the letter sin is preferable. This contradicts al-Jawhari’s report from Ibn al-Sikkit, who insists on the pronunciation with sad, saying, “Do not say sanja with sin.” The word is a Persian loanword; see al-Muarrab of al-Jawaliqi, p. 215.