17- It was read to Fāṭimah bint Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Bazzāzah, known as Nafīsah (1), while I was present and listening: Abū ʿAbdullāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭalḥah informed you; Abū al-Ḥusayn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bishrān (2) informed; ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn ʿAlī ibn Mukram narrated; al-Ḥārith ibn Muḥammad ibn Dāhir al-Tamīmī narrated; ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim narrated; Dāwūd ibn Abī Hind narrated from ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbī, who said:
Zaynab used to say to the Prophet ﷺ, “I am the wife who has the greatest right over you, and I am the best of them in marriage. The Most Merciful married me to you from above His Throne, and Gabriel was the emissary in that. I am the daughter of your paternal aunt, and none of your other wives is as closely related to you as I am.” (3)
(1) The original reads “nafsiyyah,” a reading corrected based on other manuscripts. It also appears in sources into which it was translated.
(2) In other manuscripts the name appears simply as “Abu al-Husayn ibn Bishran.”
(3) The report is mursal. It was transmitted by al-Tabari and by Abu al-Qasim al-Tahawi in Kitab al-Hujjah wa-t-Tabyan, as noted by al-Hafiz in al-Fath (13/412). See also Tafsir al-Tabari (22/14). Al-Bukhari includes it in his Sahih from Anas ibn Malik with the wording “Indeed, Allah married me in heaven” (Book of Tawhid, chapter “His Throne Was on the Water,” no. 7421), and also with the variant “He married you off to your families, and Allah married me above the seven heavens” (no. 7420); see Fath al-Bari 13/403–404. Ibn Sa‘d records both versions in al-Tabaqat (8/103, 106). The latter wording is also reported by al-Tirmidhi in Jamiʿ al-Tafsir (no. 3213; 5/354), while the former appears in Ahmad’s Musnad (3/226).