The questioner : Our Shaykh, a hadith narrated by Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi from Abu Rafi' in which he said: "I saw the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)

The questioner : Our Shaykh, a hadith narrated by Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi from Abu Rafi' in which he said: "I saw the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) call the adhan in the ear of al-Hasan ibn 'Ali when Fatimah gave birth to him"; what is the ruling on this? Is the hadith authentic?

The Shaykh : The chain of narration in al-Tirmidhi is weak. We had strengthened it while we were in Damascus, relying on Ibn al-Qayyim; he mentioned a corroborating narration from the hadith of Ibn 'Abbas, which he attributed to al-Bayhaqi in "Shu'ab al-Iman." At that time, I graded the hadith of al-Tirmidhi as hasan li ghayrihi (good due to external support) based on the hadith of al-Bayhaqi. Then, when the book "Shu'ab al-Iman" by al-Bayhaqi was printed, I reviewed the chain of the hadith of Ibn 'Abbas in it and found it to be severely weak. At that point, relying on the principles of hadith, it is not permissible to strengthen a weak hadith with a hadith whose chain is extremely weak. So we abandoned the previous grading of it as good, and we remained with its original status, which is weakness.