Third: Abū al-Nuʿmān in this chain is Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl, known as ʿĀrim. Although he was reliable, he became confused toward the end of his life. Ḥāfiẓ Burhān al-Dīn al-Ḥalabī lists him among the narrators who suffered such confusion in the section on “those who mixed up their reports” in his work al-Muqaddimah, where he states (p. 391):
“The ruling concerning them is that the ḥadith taken from them before they became confused is accepted, whereas what is taken from them after the confusion—or when the time is unknown—is rejected.”

I say: In the case of this report we do not know whether al-Dārimī heard it from him before or after the confusion set in; therefore it is not acceptable and cannot be cited as proof.1 Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah said in al-Radd ʿalā al-Bakrī, pp. 68–74:
“The narration ascribed to ʿĀʾishah—may Allah be pleased with her—about opening a skylight from his grave up to the sky so that rain might fall is unsound; its chain of transmission is not established. What further exposes its falsehood is that during ʿĀʾishah’s lifetime the chamber had no skylight at all; it remained exactly as it had been in the Prophet’s time ﷺ: part roofed and part open to the sky, and the sun would shine into it. This is confirmed in the two Ṣaḥīḥs from ʿĀʾishah, who said that the Prophet ﷺ used to pray the ʿaṣr prayer in her room while the sun was still in it and no shade had yet appeared. The Prophetic chamber stayed like that inside the Prophet’s Mosque; later it was enclosed within the mosque, then a high wall was built around ʿĀʾishah’s chamber that contained the grave, and only after that was a small opening made so that someone could descend when necessary for sweeping or cleaning. As for …"