2647 — “When the Companions of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, met one another, they would shake hands; and when they returned from a journey, they would embrace one another.”

Al-Tabarani narrated it in al-Mu'jam al-Awsat (1/8/1/99, according to my numbering). He said: Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Khalid ibn Hayyan al-Raqqi narrated to us; Yahya ibn Sulayman al-Ju'fi narrated to us; Abd al-Salam ibn Harb narrated to us, from Shu'bah, from Qatadah, from Anas, who said: … and he cited it. He then said: “No one narrated it from Shu'bah except Abd al-Salam, and al-Ju'fi alone narrated it.”

I say: He is truthful, though prone to error, as stated in al-Taqrib. He is among al-Bukhari’s teachers in al-Sahih, and all those above him in the chain are among the narrators relied upon by both al-Bukhari and Muslim. For this reason, al-Mundhiri (3/270)—followed by al-Haythami (8/36)—said: “Al-Tabarani narrated it, and its narrators are relied upon in al-Sahih.”

I say: Thus, the chain of transmission is good, although I have not found a biographical notice for Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Raqqi (1). Yet al-Tabarani’s wording apparently indicates that he was not alone in narrating it. Moreover, he was one of al-Tabarani’s frequently cited teachers, from whom he narrated approximately eighty hadiths (78–160).

It is further supported by the hadith of Jabir ibn Abd Allah: a hadith from a man among the Companions of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in Syria reached him, so he travelled to him and found that he was Abd Allah ibn Unays. He said: “He came out and embraced me …” to the end of the hadith. Al-Bukhari narrated it in al-Adab al-Mufrad (969), as did others, with a good chain of transmission. Al-Bukhari also cited it in suspended form in the Book of Knowledge in his Sahih, and in al-Adab al-Mufrad he gave it the heading: “Chapter on Embracing.”

I then found another route for the hadith, narrated by Ghalib al-Tammar, who said: