- “No urine should be left standing in a basin within the house, for the angels do not enter a house in which there is urine; nor should anyone urinate in a washing area.”
Al-Ṭabarānī recorded it in al-Awsaṭ (p. 34, Majmaʿ al-Baḥrayn, Meccan Ḥaram manuscript): Aḥmad narrated to us; Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-Baghawī narrated to us; Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbbād, Abū ʿAbbād, narrated to us; Yūnus ibn Abī Isḥāq narrated to us, from Bakr ibn Māʿiz, who said: I heard ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yazīd narrating from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and he mentioned it. He said: “It is not narrated from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yazīd except through this chain of transmission; Yaḥyā alone narrated it.”
I say: He is trustworthy and among the narrators used by both al-Bukhārī and Muslim. He is al-Ḍubayʿī al-Baṣrī, a resident of Baghdad. Likewise, all the other narrators in its chain who are covered in al-Tahdhīb are trustworthy, apart from those below him in the chain. As for al-Baghawī, al-Khaṭīb, among others, included his biography (6/370–371), and he was trustworthy and reliable.
As for al-Ṭabarānī’s teacher, Aḥmad, I have not identified him. There are many men named Aḥmad among al-Ṭabarānī’s teachers, as is evident from his al-Muʿjam al-Ṣaghīr. One of the best known is Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Abbār, who was a trustworthy hadith master; al-Khaṭīb also included his biography (4/306). Perhaps he is the one intended. A number of hadith masters considered its chain strong. Al-Mundhirī said (1/84): “Al-Ṭabarānī recorded it in al-Awsaṭ with a good chain of transmission, as did al-Ḥākim, who said: ‘Its chain of transmission is authentic.’” Al-Haythamī said the same (1/204), except that he did not attribute it to al-Ḥākim. I did not find it in his al-Mustadrak after consulting various sections of it, such as those on Purification, Knowledge, and Dress.
In his marginal notes on al-Nasāʾī (1/14), al-Suyūṭī quoted al-Ḥāfiẓ Walī al-Dīn al-ʿIrāqī as saying: