“The two fluids meet. If the woman’s fluid prevails over the man’s fluid, she conceives a female; and if the man’s fluid prevails over the woman’s fluid, she conceives a male.” They said: “You have spoken the truth. Now tell us: what is thunder?” He then mentioned it.

The bracketed wording is an addition found in one of al-Diya’s versions. Ibn Mandah likewise related it in al-Tawhid (folios 21–22) and said: “This is a chain of transmission with a continuous chain, and its narrators are well-known and trustworthy. Al-Nasa’i recorded it.”

I say: He meant in his al-Sunan al-Kubra, as al-Hafiz al-Mizzi explicitly stated in al-Tuhfah (4/394).

Al-Tirmidhi said: “A good, authentic, singular hadith.” Abu Nu‘aym said: “It is singular among Sa‘id’s reports; Bukayr alone narrated it.”

I say: He is truthful, as al-Dhahabi stated in al-Mizan. Perhaps his basis for this was Abu Hatim’s assessment of him as “a shaykh,” together with Ibn Hibban’s including him among the trustworthy narrators, and the authentication of this hadith by those scholars we have mentioned. As for al-Hafiz, he said in al-Taqrib: “Acceptable”—that is, when corroborated. Yet no one corroborated him in it, as Abu Nu‘aym explicitly stated in his preceding remark. Thus, in al-Hafiz’s view, the hadith is somewhat weak; but the stronger view is that it is authentic, as maintained by the majority, especially since al-Hafiz cited for it a corroborating report in Takhrij al-Kashshaf (p. 91), from al-Tabarani’s al-Awsat, through Abu ‘Imran al-Kufi, from Ibn Jurayj, from ‘Ata’, from Jabir: Khuzaimah ibn Thabit—not the Ansari—asked the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, about thunder. He said: “It is an angel with a whip in his hand: when he raises it, lightning flashes; when he drives the clouds, it thunders; and when he strikes, lightning bolts fall.”