dish, and offered a supplication for their increase. Then he called the men in groups of ten and they all ate of them. Then he said: ‘Take what you brought, hold it, and do not turn it upside down.’1 I put my hand in the bag; there were in my hands as many dates as I had brought. Later, during the lifetime of the Prophet (UWBP), and those of Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman, I ate of those dates.” – It is narrated through another chain of transmission: “I gave several loads of those dates to be used in God’s way. Later the bag containing the dates was plundered when ‘Uthman was assassinated.”
Abu Hurayra was a constant and important student and disciple among the People of the Bench, the sacred school and tekke of the Teacher of the Universe, the Pride of the World (UWBP). In addition, that Teacher (UWBP) had prayed for his strength of memory. The miracle of plenty he reported which occurred in a large gathering like the expedition of Tabuk, should therefore be as sound and certain as the word of a whole army.
This indubitable, manifest miracle, as pure and sweet as milk itself, is related by all six books with their sound narrations, and foremost Bukhari, who committed to memory five hundred thousand Hadiths. Moreover, it is
Tirmidhi, Manaqib, 47, no: 3839; Bayhaqi, Dala’il al-Nubuwwa, vi, 110 (through various lines of transmission); Musnad, ii, 352; Qadi Iyad, al-Shifa’, i, 295; al-Sa’ati, al-Fath al-Rabbani, xxii, 56; Tabrizi, Mishkat al-Masabih, iii, 191, no: 5933.
Bukhari, Riqaq, 17; Tirmidhi, Sifat al-Qiyama, 36, no: 2477; Musnad, ii, 515; Tirmidhi (Tahqiq: Ahmad Shakir), no: 2479; al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak, iii, 15; Qadi Iyad, al-Shifa’, i, 296.