19/330—Abu ʿAbd Allah ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (may Allah be pleased with him) said: I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ proclaim publicly, not in secret: “The family of such-and-such are not my patrons; my only Patron is Allah and the righteous believers. Yet they are relatives, and I shall maintain that kinship, watering it with its due water.” Agreed upon; the wording is that of al-Bukhārī.

[Explanation]
All of the hadiths the author—may Allah have mercy on him—has presented here demonstrate the importance of maintaining ties of the womb, that is, bonds of kinship. He opened the chapter with the narration of Abu Sufyān Ṣakhr ibn Ḥarb when he, together with some men of Quraysh, visited Heraclius. That visit occurred before Abu Sufyān accepted Islam, for he only embraced the faith in the year of the Conquest.

His arrival before Heraclius took place after the Treaty of Ḥudaybiyyah. When Heraclius—an intelligent ruler, learned in the Scriptures and aware of the Prophet’s ﷺ advent and message—heard of their coming, he summoned them. The description of the Prophet ﷺ is indeed recorded in the Torah and the Gospel, as the Exalted says: “the unlettered Prophet whom they find described with them in the Torah and the Gospel” (al-Aʿrāf 7:157). His traits were written there and well-known, to the point that they recognized him as clearly as they recognized their own sons, without a trace of doubt.

Thus, when that group of Arabs, dispatched from the Ḥijāz, arrived, Heraclius questioned them about the Prophet ﷺ—about his condition, what he enjoins, what he forbids, and about