THIRTEENTH SIGN

Another of the miracles of Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace) of which there are numerous instances, which are reported unanimously, is the sick and the wounded  being healed  through  his blessed  breath.  The reports of this  kind  of miracle  are,  as  a  whole,  unanimous  in  meaning.  Some  of  the  instances  of  these miracles also are considered to be unanimous in meaning. And if the others are single reports, since they have been rendered and confirmed as authentic by the exacting authorities of the science of Hadith, they afford the certainty of science. We shall mention a few instances of the miracles out of many.

F i r s t  E x a m p l e : The learned scholar of the Maghrib, Qadi Iyad, in his al-Shifa’ al-Sharif, narrates through an elevated chain of authorities and numerous lines of transmission that Sa‘d b. Abi Waqqas, the Noble Messenger’s (UWBP) servant and commander, and commander-in-chief of the army of Islam in the time of ‘Umar, the conqueror of Iran, and one of the ten promised Paradise, said: “I was at the Noble Messenger’s  (UWBP)  side  during  the  Battle  of  Uhud.  He  shot  arrows  at  the unbelievers until his bow broke. Then he gave arrows to me, telling me to shoot them. The arrows he gave me were without flights, that is, without the feathers which help them fly. He was ordering me to shoot them, which I did, and they flew like flighted arrows, hitting the unbelievers’ bodies and piercing them.”[191] At that point, Qatada b. Nu‘man was hit in the eye by an arrow; it was struck out of his head, so that it was sitting on the side of his face. God’s Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) took the eye in his blessed, healing hand and placed it in its socket; it was healed as though nothing had happened to it and became the better of his two eyes. This event became very widely known. A grandson of Qatada, even, once described himself to ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz as, “I am the grandson of one who, when God’s Most Noble Messenger (UWBP) placed his eye back in its socket after it had been struck out, it was suddenly healed and became his best eye.”[192] He said this in verse, introducing himself to ‘Umar in that way.

It is also related through an authentic narration that during the battle known as the Yawm Dhi-Qarad, Abu Qatada was hit in the face by an arrow.

[191] Qadi Iyad, al-Shifa’, i, 322; ‘Ali al-Qari, Sharh al-Shifa’, i, 651; al-Haythami, Majma’ al-Zawa’id, vi, 113; Muslim, Fada’il al-Sahaba, 42, no: 2412; Ibn Hibban, Sahih, ix, 65.

[192] Qadi Iyad, al-Shifa’, i, 322; al-Haythami, Majma’ al-Zawa’id, vi, 113; al-Hindi, Kanz al-‘Ummal, xii, 377; Ibn al-Qayyim, Zad al-Ma’ad (Tahqiq: Arnavudi), iii, 186-7; al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak, iii, 295.