(1) Al-Bukhari introduced the report with the heading: “Chapter on grasping with both hands; Hammad ibn Zayd shook hands with Ibn al-Mubarak using both of his hands.” Ibn Battal remarked: “Grasping someone’s hand is an intensified form of hand-shaking and is recommended by the scholars.” I reply: the hadith does not state this explicitly, for it is not concerned with the hand-shake exchanged at the moment of greeting; thus the claim is broader than the textual proof. In my view the Prophet ﷺ clasped Ibn Masud’s hand with both of his own merely to show extra care in teaching him and to capture his attention, and such an action is therefore recommended in comparable instructional settings. By contrast, the prescribed hand-shake upon meeting is with a single hand only—as the language itself indicates. Al-Nihaya defines musafaha (hand-shaking) as a reciprocal act that involves placing the flat of one palm against the other palm while the two faces look toward one another. This is confirmed by the hadiths on the virtue of hand-shaking, such as his ﷺ saying: “When a Muslim meets his brother and takes him by the hand, their sins fall away from them as leaves fall from a dry tree on a windy day; and if they do not part until this occurs they are forgiven, even if their sins were as abundant as the foam of the sea.” Al-Tabarani narrates it with a hasan chain from Salman al-Farisi, and Ahmad and others transmit it from Anas with the wording: “Whenever two Muslims meet and one of them takes the hand of his companion …” and so on. A similar report exists from al-Bara, related by Ahmad (4/289) and others. See al-Targhib, where the Prophet ﷺ explicitly mentions taking a single hand, and one should restrict oneself to that unless there is another text from him. (2) Al-Mirqat (1/557) states: … * The foregoing report appears in Daif al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib (no. 1628); its meaning is corroborated by other narrations found in Sahih al-Targhib (3/32–33).