al-Sunan al-Kubrā. He went on to say: “Abu Nuʿaym, in his work on Medicine, also reports—through another route from ʿĀʾishah—that the Prophet ﷺ instructed her parents to do so.”

I say: the chain of transmission still needs to be scrutinised.

57 – He used to eat watermelon together with fresh dates and would say, “We temper the heat of this one with the coolness of that, and the coolness of this one with the heat of that.”

The hadith was narrated by al-Humaydi in his Musnad (42/1); Abu Dawud (3835); al-Tirmidhi (1/338); Abu Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Abhari in his Fawāʾid (fol. 144/1); Abu Nuʿaym in Akhbār Iṣbahān (1/103); likewise Abu Jaʿfar al-Baḥtarī in al-Fawāʾid (4/77/2); and Abu Bakr ibn Abi Dawud in Musnad ʿĀʾishah (54/2), all on the authority of ʿĀʾishah.

Al-Tirmidhi commented, “A ḥasan gharīb (fair, singular) hadith.”

I say: the isnād recorded by al-Humaydi is authentic according to the criteria of the two Shaykhs, and Abu Dawud’s chain is sound (ḥasan). The additional wording comes from his version. Al-Ḥāfiẓ (9/496) also attributes the report to al-Nasāʾī without that extra phrase and adds: