“My garment, O stone!” until he came upon a gathering of the Children of Israel. They saw him naked, in the finest form Allah had created, and Allah cleared him of what they had been saying. [They said: “By Allah, there is nothing wrong with Moses.”] Then the stone stopped, and he took his garment and put it on. He began striking the stone with his staff. By Allah, the stone bore marks from his blows—three, four, or five. This is the meaning of His saying:

“O you who believe, do not be like those who harmed Moses; then Allah cleared him of what they said, and he was held in honor in the sight of Allah.”

It was recorded by al-Bukhari (278, 3404, and 4799), whose wording is followed here; Muslim (1/183 and 7/99); Abu ‘Awanah (1/281), with the additional wording being recorded by the latter two; al-Tirmidhi (3219), who said: “Good and authentic”; al-Tahawi in Mushkil al-Athar (1/11); Ibn Jarir al-Tabari (22/37); Ahmad (2/324, 392, 514, and 535); ‘Abdullah (2/315), both at length and in abbreviated form; al-Tayalisi (2465); and al-Baghawi in his Tafsir (6/378–379), in a very abbreviated form, through several chains from Abu Hurayrah as a report attributed to the Prophet.

The hadith also has a supporting narration related by ‘Ali ibn Zayd from Anas, in abbreviated form.

It was recorded by al-Bazzar (3/66–67), who said: “It is not narrated from Anas except through this chain of transmission.”

I say: Al-Hafiz graded it good in Mukhtasar al-Zawa’id (2/103), because this hadith of Abu Hurayrah supports it.

Note: The so-called Hassan ‘Abd al-Mannan made astonishingly haphazard blunders in his source-documentation of this hadith in his annotations to Ighathat al-Lahfan (2/398–399). He attributed its first half to al-Bukhari and Muslim, and its second half to al-Tabari! He then declared it defective on account of a narrator whose name had been corrupted by the printer, but he did not