This report is likewise rare. Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir (1) cites it and then supplies a chain going back to Abū Hurayrah, but the isnād is weak—God knows best.
Muḥammad ibn Saʿd (2) said: Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar related to us; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim told me, from his uncle al-Zuhrī, from ʿUrwah, from ʿĀʾishah, who said: The Messenger of God ﷺ declared, “I was born of lawful marriage, never of fornication.” (3)
Ibn ʿAsākir (4) also transmitted, through Abū ʿĀṣim, from Shabīb, from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbās, concerning the verse, “And your movement among those who prostrate” (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:219). He said, “From prophet to prophet until you were brought forth as a prophet.” He reported the same from ʿAṭāʾ.
Muḥammad ibn Saʿd (5) further said: Hishām ibn Muḥammad al-Kalbī told us, on the authority of his father, who said: “I traced for the Prophet ﷺ five hundred mothers, and in none of them did I find fornication or anything of the practices of the Age of Ignorance.”
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (6) records, on the authority of ʿAmr ibn Abī ʿAmr, from Saʿīd al-Maqburī, from Abū Hurayrah, that the Messenger of God ﷺ said: “I was sent from the best of the successive generations of the children of Adam, generation after generation, until I was sent in the generation in which I now live.” (7)
And in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (8), through al-Awzāʿī, from Shaddād Abū ʿAmmār, from Wāthilah ibn al-Asqaʿ, the Messenger of God ﷺ said: “God chose Ishmael from the offspring of Abraham, chose Banū Kinānah from the descendants of Ishmael, chose Quraysh from Banū Kinānah, chose Banū Hāshim from Quraysh, and chose me from Banū Hāshim.”
Imām Aḥmad (9) reported: Abū Nuʿaym narrated to us, from Sufyān, from Yazīd ibn Abī Ziyād, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Nawfal, from al-Muṭṭalib ibn Abī Waddāʿah, who said: al-ʿAbbās related that some of what the people were saying reached the Prophet ﷺ. He therefore ascended the pulpit and said, “Who am I?” They replied, “You are the Messenger of God.” He said, “I am Muḥammad son of ʿAbd Allāh son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. Indeed, God created …”