2065 — “He would grant women a concession regarding khuffs (leather socks).”

Ahmad (6/35) narrated it from Muhammad ibn Ishaq, who said: Nafi‘—whose wife was an umm walad (a concubine who had borne her master a child) of Abdullah ibn Umar—told me that she related to him that Abdullah ibn Umar bought a slave-girl on the road to Mecca, set her free, and instructed her to perform Hajj with him. He looked for a pair of sandals for her but could not find any, so he cut a pair of khuffs for her below the ankles. Ibn Ishaq said: I mentioned this to Ibn Shihab, and he said: “Salim ibn Abdullah told me that he used to do this. Then Safiyyah bint Abi Ubayd told him that Aishah had told her that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, [said the hadith quoted above], so he stopped doing it.”

I say: This is a good chain of transmission. All its narrators are trustworthy and used by the two Shaykhs, apart from Ibn Ishaq, whom Muslim cited alongside another narrator.

2066 — “When he lay awake restlessly at night, he would say: ‘There is no god worthy of worship but Allah, the One, the Irresistible Subduer, Lord of the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them, the Almighty, the All-Forgiving.’”

Ibn Nasr narrated it in The Night Prayer (43), as did Ibn Hibban (2358), al-Hakim (1/540), Ibn al-Sunni in Deeds of the Day and Night (753), Ibn Mandah in Oneness of God (66/1), and al-Sahmi in History of Jurjan (103), all through Yusuf ibn Adi: Utham ibn Ali al-Amiri narrated to us from Hisham ibn Urwah, from his father, from Aishah, may Allah be pleased with her, who related it, attributing it to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. Al-Hakim said: “Authentic according to the criterion of the two Shaykhs!” Al-Dhahabi agreed with him.

I say: Rather, it meets al-Bukhari’s criterion alone, for Muslim did not narrate from those below Hisham in the chain. Abu Hatim and Abu Zur‘ah declared the hadith defective on grounds that do not undermine it, for Ibn Abi Hatim cited in