I said: Saʿīd ibn Abī Ayyūb also corroborated him: ʿUqayl related it to me with the same wording.

Ibn Ḥibbān recorded it (5518) with the wording:

“He brought his hands together, then blew lightly into them and recited ...”

Aḥmad also recorded it (6/154), except that he said:

“He would blow lightly into them and then recite.”

I said: Saʿīd ibn Abī Ayyūb was also Egyptian. Al-Ḥāfiẓ said:

“Trustworthy and firmly established.”

Know that a number of other trustworthy narrators also transmitted the hadith from al-Zuhrī. I chose to mention this narration of ʿUqayl for two reasons.

The first is that a number of scholars attributed it to al-Bukhārī and Muslim, including Ibn Taymiyyah in al-Kalim al-Ṭayyib (no. 30), as well as many others. I had followed them in some of my annotations. But when it became clear to me that it was among al-Bukhārī’s exclusive reports, not Muslim’s, and that Muslim had only recorded it in abridged form through a route other than this route of ʿUqayl—as al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī indicated in Tuḥfat al-Ashrāf—I hastened to trace this report to its sources and draw attention to the matter.

The second is that it is more complete than the narrations of the other trustworthy transmitters, among them Mālik, al-Layth, and Yūnus. The narration of the latter is closest to that of ʿUqayl. Al-Bukhārī recorded it (5748), saying: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Uwaysī narrated to us: Sulaymān narrated to us from him, with the wording:

“When the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, retired to his bed, he would blow lightly into his palms while reciting ‘Say: He is Allah, the One’ and both surahs of refuge, then wipe his face and whatever part of his body his hands could reach with them.”

ʿĀʾishah said: “When he fell ill, he would instruct me to do that for him.”