a charitable gift to my son. 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.’ He said:

‘Do you have other sons besides him?’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ He asked, ‘Have you given all of them the like of what you gave him?’ He replied, ‘No.’ He said, ‘This is injustice; so do not make me a witness to it. Fear Allah …’”

I say: Its narrators are reliable and are among Muslim’s narrators, apart from ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim, who was truthful but made mistakes and persisted in them, as al-Ḥāfiẓ said.

However, he was corroborated. Muslim (5/66–67), Abū Dāwūd (3542), Ibn Ḥibbān (5084/al-Iḥsān), al-Ṭaḥāwī in Sharḥ al-Maʿānī (2/243–244 and 244), al-Bayhaqī (6/177–178 and 178), and Aḥmad (4/270) all transmitted it through routes from Dāwūd ibn Abī Hind, from al-Shaʿbī; and from Ismāʿīl ibn Sālim and Mujālid—in Aḥmad’s version—all three from al-Shaʿbī, with similar wording. In Dāwūd’s narration, he then said:

‘Would you be pleased for them to be equal in dutifulness toward you?’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Then, no.’

Mujālid mentioned in his narration:

‘They have a right over you that you treat them equitably, just as you have a right over them that they be dutiful to you.’

Al-Ṭayālisī also transmitted it in his Musnad (1/107/789), and al-Bayhaqī (6/177) transmitted it through him: Shuʿbah narrated to us from Mujālid, from al-Shaʿbī. Al-Bayhaqī said: ‘Mujālid alone reported this wording.’