was nothing more than naming al-ʿAbbās in his prayer and asking Allah to give them rain for his sake. The Companions, they claim, endorsed this, thereby substantiating, so they imagine, their position. As for the reason, they allege, why ʿUmar did not seek intercession through the Messenger ﷺ but instead through al-ʿAbbās, it was merely to show that it is permissible to seek intercession through someone of lesser virtue even when one of greater virtue is present—nothing else.

Their understanding is mistaken, and their interpretation can be rejected on many grounds, the most important of which are the following:

1. A fundamental rule of Islamic law is that the revealed texts elucidate one another, and no single text on a given topic may be understood in isolation from the others that address it. Accordingly, the report of ʿUmar’s tawassul must be interpreted in light of all the authentic narrations on tawassul once they are collected and verified. Both we and our opponents agree that in ʿUmar’s words—“We used to seek nearness to You through our Prophet… and now we seek nearness to You through the uncle of our Prophet”—something has been omitted that must be supplied. The ellipsis can be filled in only one of two ways: either, as they maintain, “We used to seek nearness to You by the rank of our Prophet, and now we seek nearness to You by the rank of the uncle of our Prophet”; or, as we maintain, “We used to seek nearness to You by the supplication of our Prophet, and now we seek nearness to You by the supplication of the uncle of our Prophet.”

One of these two insertions is indispensable for the statement to be understood with clarity and precision.

To determine which of the two is correct, we must turn to the Sunnah, for it will show us how the noble Companions practiced tawassul through the Prophet ﷺ.