“They walked behind the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, so he said: ‘Walk ahead of me, and leave the space behind me for the angels.’”

I say: Al-Hakim also narrated something close to it with the wording: “Do not walk before me or behind me, for this is the station of the angels.” He related it through Shuʿbah, from al-Aswad, with the same chain. As you can see, this version also prohibits walking ahead of him, unlike Sufyan’s two narrations. What is meant in those narrations by walking ahead of him is walking to his right and left, not being in front of him as opposed to behind him. And Allah knows best.

2088 — “Whenever revelation descended upon him, he would be weighed down by it, and sweat would stream down his forehead like pearls, even in cold weather.”

Abu Nuʿaym reported it in Dalaʾil al-Nubuwwah (73) through al-Tabarani: Muhammad ibn ʿUthman ibn Abi Shaybah narrated to us; ʿUqbah ibn Mukarram narrated to us; Yunus ibn Bukayr narrated to us, from ʿUthman ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman, from al-Zuhri, from Sahl ibn Saʿd, who said: I heard Zayd ibn Thabit say—and he then cited it.

I say: This chain of transmission is exceedingly weak. This ʿUthman ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman is al-Zuhri al-Qurashi al-Waqqasi, and he is a liar. However, al-Haythami cited the hadith in al-Majmaʿ (8/257) with similar wording and said: “Al-Tabarani reported it through two chains of transmission, and the narrators of one of them are trustworthy.”

It then became clear to me that both chains revolve around al-Waqqasi. Al-Tabarani reported it in al-Muʿjam al-Kabir (5/123/4787) with the chain cited above, as narrated by Abu Nuʿaym from him. Then al-Tabarani continued, shifting to another chain: Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Mandah al-Isfahani narrated to us; Abu Kurayb narrated to us. Both of them—that is, the aforementioned ʿUqbah ibn Mukarram in the first chain and this Abu Kurayb—said: Yunus ibn Bukayr narrated to us