of supplicating for the deceased after the funeral prayer.

5 – His words, “Seek forgiveness for your brother,” affirm Islamic brotherhood, the strongest and firmest of all ties. Allah, the Exalted, says: “The believers are but brothers” (al-Hujurāt 49:10).

They also achieve another purpose: they draw the hearts of the mourners together and soften them toward the deceased so that their prayers and pleas for forgiveness are pure and sincere.

6 – As for report 480, it resembles the hadith of Abū Umāmah on talqīn (prompting). The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “When one of you dies and you have levelled the earth over his grave, let one of you stand at the head of the grave and say: ‘O so-and-so son of so-and-so, remember what you professed in the world: the testimony that there is no deity but Allah and that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger; that you were content with Allah as Lord, with Islam as religion, with Muhammad as Prophet, and with the Quran as guide.’”

This hadith cannot be soundly traced back to the Prophet; scholars have judged it weak, among them the author of Asnā al-Maṭālib, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, al-Nawawī, al-ʿIrāqī, Ibn Ḥajar, and al-Ṣanʿānī.

Al-Athram said: “I asked Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal about this practice people perform when the deceased is buried—someone stands and says, ‘O so-and-so son of so-and-so ….’ He replied, ‘I have never seen anyone do it except the people of Syria when Abū al-Mughīrah died.’”

Ibn al-Qayyim stated in al-Manār: “Those versed in hadith have no doubt that this talqīn report is fabricated.”

Al-Haythamī remarked, “Its chain contains narrators I do not know,” and al-Nawawī said, “It is weak.”

Al-Ṣanʿānī concluded: “From the words of the leading critical scholars it emerges that this hadith is weak, and acting upon it is an innovation; let no one be deceived by the large numbers who practise it.”

Accordingly, the report the author cites here is weak and affords no proof; it is the twin of Abū Umāmah’s hadith in both content and weakness. For that reason al-ʿIrāqī said—