“‘Upon you be peace’ is the greeting of the dead.”

He said, “O Messenger of Allah, counsel me.” He said: ... and then related the hadith. Al-Nasa’i said:

“Sahm ibn al-Mu‘tamir is unknown.”

I say: Ibn Hibban mentioned him in al-Thiqat (6/430), in accordance with his practice of declaring unknown narrators trustworthy; for no one narrated from this Sahm except ‘Abd al-Malik ibn al-Hasan al-Jari, who narrated this hadith from him. Therefore, al-Dhahabi indicated in al-Kashif that this declaration of trustworthiness was tentative, saying: “He was declared trustworthy.”

Al-Hafiz said in al-Taqrib:

“Acceptable.”

That is, when corroborated. I have found a strong corroborating report for him. Ahmad (3/482) said: Isma‘il ibn Ibrahim narrated to us; Sa‘id al-Jurayri narrated to us, from Abu al-Salil, from Abu Tamimah al-Hujaymi, from a man of his people, who said:

I met the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, on one of the roads of Medina. He was wearing a cotton waist-wrapper with a frayed edge. I said, “Upon you be peace, O Messenger of Allah.” He said:

“‘Upon you be peace’ is the greeting of the dead.”

He said: He repeated it three times, then said:

“Peace be upon you, peace be upon you”—twice or three times.

He said: I asked him about the waist-wrapper, saying, “Where should I wear it?” He raised the back of his waist-wrapper to his shinbone and said:

“Wear it here. If you refuse, then here, lower than that. If you refuse, then here, above the ankles. And if you refuse, then Allah does not love every arrogant boaster.”