al-Khaṭṭāb, and a black servant to dig. When they had completed the task, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ entered the grave, lay down in it, and said: “Allah is the One who gives life and causes death, and He is the Ever-Living who never dies. Forgive my mother Fāṭimah bint Asad, enable her to answer her questioning, and broaden her entrance by virtue of Your Prophet and the prophets who came before me; indeed, You are the Most Merciful of those who show mercy.”

Al-Haythamī said in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid 9/257: “It was narrated by al-Ṭabarānī in al-Kabīr and al-Awsat. In its chain is Rawḥ ibn Ṣalāḥ, whom Ibn Ḥibbān and al-Ḥākim deemed trustworthy, yet he has some weakness, and the remainder of the transmitters are those found in the Ṣaḥīḥ.”

I say: The report also appears through al-Ṭabarānī’s route in Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ 3/12, and its chain in both sources is weak, for Rawḥ ibn Ṣalāḥ is alone in transmitting it, as Abū Nuʿaym himself acknowledged. Ibn ʿAdiyy graded Rawḥ weak; Ibn Yūnus said, “I have narrated from him reports that are objectionable (munkar)”; al-Dāraquṭnī said, “He is weak in hadith”; Ibn Mākūlā remarked, “They considered him weak”; and Ibn ʿAdiyy, after citing two of his reports, added, “He has many ḥadiths, some of which are objectionable.” They are therefore unanimous in declaring him weak, and his report is objectionable because he alone related it.

Some have nevertheless tried to shore up this ḥadith by appealing to the endorsement of Rawḥ by Ibn Ḥibbān and al-Ḥākim, but that avails them nothing, for both scholars are known for their leniency in accrediting narrators. Their approval carries no weight when it clashes with a detailed criticism—even if that criticism were vague, let alone when it is explicit, as is the case here. I have elaborated on the weakness of this ḥadith in al-Silsilah al-Ḍaʿīfah, no. 23, and will not repeat the discussion in this brief note. Yet these individuals produced something laughable when they said, “Shaykh Nāṣir has ruled that…”