The Prophet ﷺ then asked, “Is this your son?”
He replied, “Yes.”
The Prophet said,
“Indeed, he will not be held accountable for your deeds, nor will you be held accountable for his.”(1)

Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān recorded: Abū Naʿīm narrated to us; ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Iyād narrated to us; my father related to me from Abū Rabīʿah—​or Abū Rimthah—​who said: “I went with my father to the Prophet ﷺ. He noticed something like a swelling between the Prophet’s shoulders. My father said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, I am counted among the most skilled physicians; shall I treat it for you?’ He replied,
‘No. The One who created it is its physician.’(3)

Al-Bayhaqī said: al-Thawrī, on the authority of Iyād ibn Laqiṭ regarding this ḥadīth, described it thus: ‘Behind his shoulder there was something like an apple.’(4)

ʿĀṣim ibn Bahdalah, narrating from Abū Rimthah, said: ‘On the socket of his shoulder there was something like a camel’s dropping, or the size of a dove’s egg.’

Al-Bayhaqī also transmitted—​through the chain of Simāk ibn Ḥarb from Abū Salāmah al-ʿIjlī, from Salmān al-Fārsī—​that Salmān said: “I came to the Messenger of Allah. He cast off his cloak and said,
‘O Salmān, look at what you have been ordered to observe.’
So I looked, and I saw the Seal between his shoulders, about the size of a dove’s egg.”(5)

Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān further narrated—​from al-Ḥumaydī, from Yaḥyā ibn Sulaym, from Ibn Khuthaym,(6) from Saʿīd ibn Abī Rāshid, from the Tanūkhī whom Heraclius had dispatched to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ while the Prophet was at Tabūk—​the story already mentioned under the Expedition of Tabūk, until he said: “The Prophet loosened the cloth he had wrapped around his back and then said, ‘Here—​proceed with what you have been commanded.’ I examined his back and saw the Seal at the juncture of the shoulder cartilage, resembling a large cupping scar.”(7)

This is an exceedingly rare report, related by Ibn Ḥibbān.

Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān also said: Muslim ibn Ibrāhīm narrated to us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Maysarah narrated to us; ʿAttāb narrated to us—​I heard Abū Saʿīd say: “The Seal between the Prophet’s shoulders ﷺ was a protruding piece of flesh.”(8)

Imām Aḥmad recorded: Suratj narrated to us; Abū Laylā ʿAbd Allāh ibn Maysarah al-Khurāsānī narrated to us, from Ghayyāth al-Bakrī, who said: “We used to sit with Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī in Madinah. Someone asked him about the Seal of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ that was between…"