and she saddled a camel of hers, placed me on the saddle, and rode behind me until we reached my mother. She said, “I have discharged my trust and my responsibility.” She then told her what had happened to me, but this did not alarm her. She said, “I saw a light emerge from me by which the palaces of Syria were illuminated.”

It was narrated by al-Dārimī (1/8–9), al-Ḥākim (2/616–617), and Aḥmad (4/184), through Baqiyyah ibn al-Walīd, who said: Buḥayr ibn Saʿd narrated to me, from Khālid ibn Maʿdān, from ʿUtbah ibn ʿAbd al-Sulamī—who was one of the Companions of Allah’s Messenger—that a man asked Allah’s Messenger, “How did your affair begin, O Messenger of Allah?” He replied, and mentioned it.

The wording is that of the first source. Al-Ḥākim said, “It is authentic according to Muslim’s criterion,” and al-Dhahabī agreed with him.

This assessment, however, warrants scrutiny, for Baqiyyah has only one hadith in Muslim, as a corroborating report, as al-Khazrajī stated. Yet this is a good chain of transmission, since Baqiyyah explicitly stated that he heard it. Al-Haythamī also included it in al-Majmaʿ (8/222) and said: “Aḥmad and al-Ṭabarānī narrated it, though al-Ṭabarānī did not give the text in full; Aḥmad’s chain of transmission is good.”

Abū Nuʿaym also narrated it in al-Dalāʾil, as cited in al-Bidāyah (2/275). This hadith has many supporting reports; see “I Am the Answer to the Supplication of My Forefather Abraham,” no. 1545.

374 — “The foremost of the martyrs is Ḥamzah ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, and a man who confronts an unjust ruler, enjoining him to what is right and forbidding him from what is wrong, and is then killed by him.”

Al-Ḥākim (3/195) narrated it through Rāfiʿ ibn Ashras al-Marwazī, who said: Ḥafīd al-Ṣaffār narrated to us, from Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāʾigh, from ʿAṭāʾ, from Jābir, from the Prophet, with this wording. He said: