He went on, “Tell me: if Allah wills to accomplish a matter, can anyone among humankind prevent it?”
They replied, “No.”
He said: “Then they followed him and stayed with him.”
Again he declared, “I adjure you by Allah, O assembly of Arabs: who is his guardian?”
Abū Ṭālib answered, “I am.”
The monk kept imploring him until Abū Ṭālib turned back with the boy, and the monk provisioned them with flat cakes and oil.

Al-Tirmidhī said: “This is a sound, singular hadith; we do not know it except through this route.” Al-Bayhaqī also recorded it in his Proofs of Prophethood, on the authority of al-ʿAbbās ibn Muḥammad from Qurād ibn Nūḥ, and al-ʿAbbās said: “No one narrated it—meaning with this chain—except Qurād, and Yaḥyā and Aḥmad heard it from Qurād.”

Al-Bayhaqī commented: “What he meant is that no one besides these transmitters related it with this particular chain; as for the event itself, it is famous among the scholars of the prophetic campaigns.”