- “He would not go to sleep until he had recited ‘Alif-Lam-Mim: The Revelation’—Surah al-Sajdah—and ‘Blessed is He in whose hand is dominion’—Surah al-Mulk.”
Authentic. Al-Tirmidhi (2/146), al-Darimi (2/455), Ahmad (3/340), and al-Baghawi in his Exegesis (6/496) narrated it from Layth, from Abu al-Zubayr, from Jabir, as a report attributed to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.
Al-Tirmidhi said: “More than one narrator reported this hadith from Layth ibn Abi Sulaym in this manner. Mughira ibn Muslim also narrated something similar from Abu al-Zubayr, from Jabir, from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.
“Zuhayr narrated: I said to Abu al-Zubayr, ‘Did you hear this hadith from Jabir?’ Abu al-Zubayr replied, ‘Rather, Safwan—or Ibn Safwan—informed me of it.’ It appears that Zuhayr denied that this hadith was narrated by Abu al-Zubayr from Jabir.”
I say: Al-Baghawi supplied the connected chain for this suspended report in al-Ja'diyyat (fol. 117/2), and Ibn ʿAsakir narrated it from him in The History of Damascus (6/54/2). He said: Ali narrated to us; Zuhayr informed us; he said: I said ... and so on.
I say: Thus, the hidden defect in the hadith is Safwan, or Ibn Safwan, whose lineage was not specified. However, I saw that al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar mentioned him in “The Chapter on Those Attributed to Their Fathers or Grandfathers ...” as “Safwan ibn Abd Allah ibn Safwan, attributed to his grandfather.” If this is so, then both Safwan and Ibn Safwan refer to him; and he is trustworthy, and among the narrators of Muslim. The rest of al-Baghawi’s narrators are likewise reliable. Zuhayr is Ibn Muʿawiyah ibn Khudayj, Abu Khaythamah. Thus, the chain of transmission is authentic. Allah is the Granter of success.
As for the narration of Mughira ibn Muslim, al-Thaʿlabi in his Exegesis (3/84/1) and al-Wahidi in al-Wasit (3/199/1) supplied its connected chain, through their respective chains from him, from Abu al-Zubayr, from Jabir, with the same wording, but adding: “He would say: They surpass every surah in the Quran by seventy years. Whoever recites them will have seventy good deeds recorded for him, seventy evil deeds erased from him, and will be raised seventy degrees.”