Tawassul falls under five headings:
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Seeking a means to Allah through His Most Beautiful Names and His sublime Attributes. This is unquestionably lawful. Allah, Exalted is He, says: “And to Allah belong the Most Beautiful Names, so call upon Him by them.” (al-Aʿrāf 7:180). Al-Bukhārī (7392) and Muslim (2677) relate on the authority of Abū Hurayrah that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “Allah has ninety-nine Names; whoever enumerates them will enter Paradise.” Likewise, Imām Aḥmad (1/391) transmits from Ibn Masʿūd that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Whenever anyone is gripped by anxiety or grief and he says, ‘… I ask You by every Name that is Yours—by which You have named Yourself, taught to any of Your creation, revealed in Your Book, or kept with You in the unseen realm—relieve me of my worry and sorrow,’ Allah will indeed remove his anxiety and replace his sadness with relief.”
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Seeking a means by presenting one’s own righteous deed. This too is lawful. The clearest example is the well-known story reported in the two Ṣaḥīḥs about the three men trapped in a cave when a rock sealed the entrance; nothing delivered them from their ordeal but their appeal to Allah through the virtuous deeds each of them had performed. In this vein the righteous believers said, “Our Lord, we have believed in what You have revealed and we have followed the Messenger, so register us among the witnesses.” (Āl ʿImrān 3:53).
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Seeking a means through the supplication of a pious person. The present hadith is explicit on this point, for its implied wording is: “O Allah, we used to seek a means to You through the supplication of our Prophet, and You would send us rain; now we seek a means to You through the supplication of our Prophet’s uncle, so send us rain.” Had the intention been to seek a means through mere rank or status, they would not have placed al-ʿAbbās in front, for the Prophet’s ﷺ rank with his Lord endures in both life and death. These first three forms of tawassul are permissible.
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Seeking a means through someone’s rank or ‘right’—for example, saying: “I seek nearness to You by the rank of the Prophet,” or “by the right of the Prophet,” or “by the right of so-and-so.” This is an innovated, non-legislated form of tawassul, for it is neither found in the Book nor the Sunnah, nor was it transmitted from the Companions or from any of