Likewise, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak and others transmitted the report from Baqiyyah ibn al-Walīd with the same chain.
Ibn ʿAsākir also recorded it (1) through the route of Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī, who said: “Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUthmān al-Qurashī related to us; ʿUmar ibn ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr (2) informed me that he heard ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr narrate from Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, who said:
‘I asked, “O Messenger of Allah, how did you come to know that you were a Prophet—how did you attain that knowledge and absolute certainty?” He replied:
“O Abū Dharr, two angels came to me while I was in one of the open plains of Mecca. One of them alighted upon the earth, while the other remained between heaven and earth. One said to his companion, ‘Is it he?’ The other replied, ‘Yes, it is he.’ He then said, ‘Weigh him against a man.’ They weighed me against a man, and I outweighed him.” ’
He went on to recount the rest of the incident, mentioning the splitting of his chest, its stitching, and the placing of the Seal between his shoulder blades. He concluded:
‘No sooner had they turned away from me than it was as though I were beholding the unseen realities with my own eyes.’ ”
Ibn ʿAsākir (3) also brought a similar narration from Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, and an even more detailed version from Shaddād ibn Aws (4).
Moreover, it is established in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (5)—through Ḥammād ibn Salamah, from Thābit, from Anas ibn Mālik—that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) was visited by Gabriel (peace be upon him) while he was playing with some boys. Gabriel seized him, laid him on the ground, split open his chest, removed his heart, and extracted from it a black clot, saying: “This is Satan’s share of you.” He then washed the heart in a basin of gold filled with Zamzam water, stitched it, and returned it to its place. The boys ran to his mother—meaning his wet-nurse—crying, “Muhammad has been killed!” They rushed back to him and found him pale-faced. Anas said, “I used to see the mark of that stitching on his chest.”
Ibn ʿAsākir (9) likewise narrated—through Ibn Wahb, from ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith, from ʿAbd Rabbih ibn Saʿīd, from Thābit al-Bunnānī, from Anas—that the prayer was made obligatory in Mecca (11), and that two angels came to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) and took him to Zamzam