- “Fear Allah and be equitable among your children, just as you wish them to be dutiful to you.”
Al-Suyūṭī cited it in both of his compilations, al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr and al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr, on the authority of al-Ṭabarānī in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr, from the hadith of al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr. As was generally his practice, he made no comment on it. Al-Haythamī did not include it in his Majmaʿ, because its basic report occurs in the two Ṣaḥīḥs and elsewhere, as will follow; however, they do not contain the phrase concerning wishing for one’s children’s dutifulness. This was among the reasons that led me to include it in Ḍaʿīf al-Jāmiʿ when I divided Shaykh al-Nabahānī’s al-Fatḥ al-Kabīr fī Ḍamm al-Ziyādah ilā al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr into two sections: authentic and weak.
Now, however, as Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has graciously granted me some energy and strength for research and writing during the illness that had left me incapacitated—and as I was revising al-Fatḥ al-Kabīr—it became necessary to reach a scholarly conclusion concerning this hadith and similar reports that I had left unclassified, for the reason mentioned above and similar reasons explained in the introduction to the two sections just referred to. I therefore renewed my research into this hadith, but did not find it in al-Ṭabarānī’s Muʿjam, because the volume containing it, among the names beginning with the letter nūn, has not yet been printed. Yet Allah, Most High, enabled me to find it in a source that researchers seldom consult, and I found corroborating evidence that strengthens it. I say:
Muslim al-Wāsiṭī, known as Baḥshal, narrated it in Tārīkh Wāsiṭ (224–225), through ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim, from Dāwūd ibn Abī Hind, Ḥuṣayn ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid, Muṭarrif, and Abū Isḥāq al-Shaybānī, from ʿĀmir, who said: I heard al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr delivering a sermon from the pulpit, saying:
“My father made a charitable gift to me. Then ʿAmrah bint Rawāḥah said, ‘I will not be satisfied until you have the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, testify to it.’ So Bashīr came to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, and said, ‘I have given my son