and he said: “A good, authentic hadith.”

2 — From Abū Hurayrah or Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, as a Prophetic report: “When you ask Allah, ask Him for Firdaws, for it is the middle of Paradise and its highest part. Above it is the Throne of the Most Merciful, and from it flow the rivers of Paradise.”

Ibn Jarīr narrated it with this wording. Its documentation has already been given under no. (921), on the authority of Abū Hurayrah alone, in similar wording, through the narration of al-Bukhārī and others; and under no. (922), on the authority of ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit, as a Prophetic report in similar wording.

2004 — “When a Muslim meets his fellow Muslim, takes his hand, and shakes hands with him, their sins fall away from between their fingers just as the leaves of trees scatter in winter.”

Bahshal narrated it in History of Wāsiṭ (p. 165): Wahb ibn Baqiyyah narrated to us: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sufyān al-Wāsiṭī informed me, from al-Awzāʿī, from ʿAbdah ibn Abī Lubābah, from Mujāhid, from Ibn ʿAbbās, as a Prophetic report. ʿAbdah said: “I said to Mujāhid, ‘This is indeed an easy matter.’ Mujāhid replied, ‘Do not say that. Allah Most High says in His Book: “Had you spent all that is on earth, you could not have united their hearts; but Allah united them” (1).’ Thus I recognized the superiority of his knowledge over that of others.”

I say: This is a chain of transmission whose narrators are all trustworthy and among Muslim’s narrators, except for ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sufyān al-Wāsiṭī. Al-ʿUqaylī said: