‘By Allah, I did not speak to him. But I was present with the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—when a blind man came to him and complained of losing his sight. The Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—asked him, “Will you bear it patiently?”

‘He replied, “O Messenger of Allah, I have no one to guide me, and this has become difficult for me.” The Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—told him, “Go to the place for ablution and perform ablution, then pray two units of prayer, then offer these supplications.”’

Uthmān ibn Hunayf said: ‘By Allah, we had neither dispersed nor spoken for long before the man came in to us, as though he had never suffered any affliction.’”

Al-Tabarānī said: “Shu‘bah narrated this hadith from Abū Ja‘far, whose name is Umayr ibn Yazīd and who is trustworthy. Uthmān ibn Umar alone transmitted it from Shu‘bah.” Abū Abd Allāh al-Maqdisī said: “The hadith is authentic.”

I say: Al-Tabarānī stated that he alone transmitted it according to the extent of his knowledge. The transmission of Rawh ibn Ubādah from Shu‘bah had not reached him. That chain of transmission is authentic and demonstrates that Uthmān ibn Umar was not its sole transmitter.

This route through Ibn Wahb supports what Ibn Adī mentioned, for Ibn Wahb did not preserve the wording of the report as precisely as Shabīb’s two sons did. Rather, he stated in it that the blind man offered the same supplication that Uthmān ibn Hunayf mentioned. That is not the case. Rather, the hadith of the blind man states that he said:

“O Allah, accept his intercession for me, and accept my intercession for him—or he said: for myself.”

Ibn Wahb did not mention this in his transmission. It therefore appears that Ibn Wahb related it from memory, as Ibn Adī said, and did not transmit it accurately.

Abū Bakr ibn Abī Khaythamah also narrated the hadith of Hammād ibn Salamah in his History, saying:

Muslim ibn Ibrāhīm narrated to us; Hammād ibn Salamah narrated to us; Abū Ja‘far al-Khatmī informed us, from Umārah ibn Khuzaymah, from Uthmān ibn Hunayf, who related “that