It has been narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās that when Gabriel first descended upon the Prophet Peace and blessings of God be upon him, he taught him seeking refuge.
137- Abū Kurayb narrated to us, he said: ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd narrated to us, he said: Bishr ibn ʿUmāra narrated to us, he said: Abū Rawq narrated to us, from al-Ḍaḥḥāk, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās, he said: The first thing Gabriel brought down to Muḥammad, he said: "O Muḥammad, seek refuge! Say: 'I seek refuge in the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing, from the accursed Devil.'" Then he said: Say: "In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful." Then he said: ﴿Recite in the name of your Lord who created﴾ [al-ʿAlaq: 1]. ʿAbd Allāh said: And it is the first surah that Allah revealed to Muḥammad through the tongue of Gabriel (1).
So he commanded him to seek refuge in Allah, to the exclusion of His creation.
Notes
- (1) Hadith 137: Ibn Kathīr cited it in the Tafsir 1: 30 from this place in al-Ṭabarī, and said: "And this report is Singular! We only mentioned it so that it may be known, for in its Chain of transmission there is weakness and a break." Al-Ṭabarī will narrate it after this, under numbers 138 and 139, with this same Chain of transmission, at greater length than here. We will mention the weakness to which Ibn Kathīr referred; and his statement "seek refuge" is not in the printed edition.
As for ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd, he is al-Zayyāt al-Aḥwal, biographical entry in al-Tahdhīb, and in al-Jarḥ wa-l-Taʿdīl by Ibn Abī Ḥātim 3/1/152; he narrated from his father that he said: "There is no harm in him." As for Bishr ibn ʿUmāra, he is al-Khathʿamī al-Kūfī, and he is Da'if (Weak); al-Bukhārī said in al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr 1/2/81: "He narrates familiar and unfamiliar things," al-Nasāʾī said in al-Ḍuʿafāʾ: p. 6: "Da'if (Weak)", al-Dāraquṭnī said: "Abandoned", and Ibn Ḥibbān said in Kitāb al-Majrūḥīn: p. 125, no. 132: "He used to make mistakes until he went beyond the point of being cited as evidence when alone, and he did not know hadith nor its craft." As for his teacher Abū Rawq — with a fatha on the rāʾ and a sukūn on the wāw — he is ʿAṭiyya ibn al-Ḥārith al-Hamdānī, and he is trustworthy, and Aḥmad and al-Nasāʾī said: "There is no harm in him."
As for the break to which Ibn Kathīr referred, it is because of their disagreement over whether al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Muzāḥim al-Hilālī heard from Ibn ʿAbbās. We have preferred in the commentary on al-Musnad: 2262 that he heard from him.
And Bishr ibn ʿUmāra's weakness in the Chain of transmission is sufficient, along with the objectionable nature of the context he narrated and its strangeness!!
This translation was produced with AI assistance and is part of an ongoing human-review process. Found a mistake? Use the feedback option in the reader menu.
