saw the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) race his horse, and it won; he said: “It is truly a sea!” And I saw him one day striking with his sword in the cause of Allah, whereupon he said the same words, tracing his lineage to his grandmothers from Banū Sulaym.

I say: This chain of transmission has trustworthy narrators, apart from Isḥāq ibn Zayd, al-Khaṭṭābī al-Ḥarrānī. Ibn Abī Ḥātim profiled him (1/1/220), mentioning his transmission from a number of shaykhs, and said: “My father heard from him in Ḥarrān.” He mentioned neither criticism nor accreditation of him. In sum, through these routes, the hadith is good, at the very least.

1570 — “I am the first to take hold of the ring of the gate of Paradise and rattle it.”

Al-Tirmidhī (4/140) and al-Dārimī (1/27) recorded it through the route of Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, from Ibn Judʿān, from Anas, directly attributed to the Prophet. Al-Tirmidhī said: “A good hadith.” Ḥammād ibn Salamah differed from him, reporting it from ʿAlī ibn Zayd, from Abū Naḍrah, who said: “Ibn ʿAbbās addressed us from the pulpit of Baṣrah and said: ‘The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: …’”

I say: He then related the lengthy hadith of intercession, which includes: “Then I shall come to the gate of Paradise, take hold of the ring of the gate of Paradise, and knock at the gate…” Aḥmad recorded it (1/281–282 and 295–296). ʿAlī ibn Zayd is Ibn Judʿān, and he is weak. This portion of his hadith has a supporting narration through another route, from Zamʿah, from Salamah, from Ibn ʿAbbās, directly attributed to the Prophet, with the wording: “…and I am the first to move the rings of Paradise, and this is no boast…”