and other authoritative works of the Hanafi scholars. As for the noble Qur’anic verses and the purified Sunnah that demolish the very foundations of shirk (polytheism) and censure its perpetrators, they are too numerous to count. Our own teacher, the eminent scholar Sayyid Muḥammad Nadhir Ḥusayn al-Dihlawī, has composed a decisive treatise refuting that abhorrent innovation.

2- The narration about opening a skylight above the Messenger’s grave, peace and blessings be upon him, up to the sky:
Al-Dārimī relates in his Sunan (1/43): “Abū al-Nuʿmān narrated to us; Saʿīd ibn Zayd narrated to us; ʿAmr ibn Mālik al-Nukrī narrated to us; Abū al-Jawzāʾ Aws ibn ʿAbd Allāh said: ‘The people of Medina were stricken with a severe drought, so they complained to ʿĀʾisha. She said, “Look to the Prophet’s grave—peace and blessings be upon him—and open an aperture above it to the sky so that nothing remains between it and the sky.” They did so, and we were blessed with rain until the land turned green and the camels grew so fat that they split with fat; that year was therefore called “the Year of Bursting.”’”

I say: This chain of transmission is weak and cannot serve as proof for three reasons.

First: Saʿīd ibn Zayd—the brother of Ḥammād ibn Zayd—is weak. Al-Ḥāfiẓ states in al-Taqrīb, “Truthful but prone to mistakes.” Al-Dhahabī records in al-Mīzān that Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd said, “Weak,” while al-Saʿdī remarked, “He is no proof; they declare his ḥadith weak.” Al-Nasāʾī and others said, “He is not strong,” and Aḥmad said, “There is no harm in him,” yet Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd “could not stomach him.”

Second: The report is mawqūf; it stops with ʿĀʾisha and is not traced back to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. Even were it authentic, it would carry no binding force, for it could simply be the personal judgment of a Companion—something in which they may be right or wrong—and we are not obliged to act upon such individual ijtihād.