- “The believing servant, when afflicted by malaise or fever, is like a piece of iron placed in the fire: its impurities depart, while its good quality remains.”
Al-Ḥākim (1/348), al-Bazzār in his Musnad (no. 756), Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (68/1), and Ibn ʿAsākir (9/427/2) recorded it through Nāfiʿ ibn Yazīd, who said: Jaʿfar ibn Rabīʿah narrated to me, from ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Sāʾib, that ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Azhar narrated to him from his father, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Azhar, that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said it.
Al-Ḥākim said: “Its chain of transmission is authentic; its narrators are Medinans and Egyptians.” Al-Dhahabī agreed with him. Al-Haythamī said in al-Majmaʿ (2/302): “Al-Bazzār and al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Kabīr, and it contains an unknown narrator.” This is what he said! Yet ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Azhar was a young Companion who died before the Battle of al-Ḥarrah. He is mentioned, alongside ʿĀʾishah, in the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections, and he is among the narrators cited by Abū Dāwūd and al-Nasāʾī.
His son, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Azhar, was included by Ibn Abī Ḥātim in al-Jarḥ wa-al-Taʿdīl (Narrator Criticism and Accreditation) (3/1/15), on the basis of Jaʿfar ibn Rabīʿah’s narration from him, but he mentioned no criticism or accreditation concerning him. Ibn Ḥibbān, however, included him in The Reliable Successors (3/222/137) and said: “He was from the people of Medina. He narrated from his father and from a group of the Successors, and the people of Medina narrated from him.” Thus, he is known through the Medinans’ narration from him, among them ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who will be mentioned below. He is therefore a Successor whose reliability is not explicitly established, and a narrator of his kind has good hadiths, Allah willing.
As for ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who was Ibn al-Sāʾib, Ibn Abī Ḥātim said (2/2/323): “He narrated from ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Azhar, and Nāfiʿ ibn Yazīd narrated from him.”