whatever need you may have, come to me.”

The man then left ʿUthmān’s presence, met ʿUthmān ibn Ḥanīf, and said, “May Allah reward you well! He would not look into my business or so much as turn toward me until he granted it on your account.” ʿUthmān ibn Ḥanīf replied, “By Allah, I never even spoke to him. What I did was recall that I had witnessed the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when a blind man came to him and complained of having lost his sight. The Prophet ﷺ said to him, ‘Will you be patient?’ The man answered, ‘O Messenger of Allah, I have no guide, and the matter weighs heavily on me.’ The Prophet ﷺ then said, ‘Go to the place of ablution, perform wudūʾ, pray two rakʿahs, and afterward make this supplication.’” ʿUthmān ibn Ḥanīf continued, “By Allah, we had not dispersed, and our conversation had not gone on for long, before the man came back to us as though he had never been blind at all.”

Al-Ṭabarānī said: “No one transmitted it from Rūḥ ibn al-Qāsim except Shabīb ibn Saʿīd Abū Saʿīd al-Makkī, and he is reliable. He is the same narrator from whom Aḥmad ibn Shabīb reports—from his father—from Yūnus ibn Yazīd al-Aylī. This ḥadīth was also related by Shuʿbah from Abū Jaʿfar al-Khaṭmī, whose name is ʿUmayr ibn Yazīd, and he is trustworthy; ʿUthmān ibn ʿUmar ibn Fāris alone transmitted it from Shuʿbah, and the ḥadīth is sound.”

I say: There is no doubt about the authenticity of the ḥadīth itself; the present inquiry concerns only this story that Shabīb ibn Saʿīd alone reported, as al-Ṭabarānī mentioned. Shabīb, moreover, has been critiqued—especially in the narrations Ibn Wahb transmits from him. Yet he was followed in this report by his two sons, Ismāʿīl and Aḥmad. As for Ismāʿīl, I do not know him and have found no one who has mentioned him; the critics ignored him to the extent that they did not even list him among those narrating from their father. His brother Aḥmad, in contrast, is deemed truthful. Concerning their father Shabīb, the scholars’ overall judgment is that he is trustworthy though his retention is weak—except in the transmission Aḥmad relates from him through Yūnus specifically, for in that chain he is considered authoritative. Al-Dhahabī said in al-Mīzān, “Truthful, though he narrates uncommon reports.” Ibn ʿAdī mentioned him in