she pointed with her hand to the sky, he said: "Who am I?" she said: You are the Messenger of Allāh. The Messenger of Allāh (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) said: "Free her, for she is a believer." It was recorded by al-Bazzār (1/28/37) with an authentic chain from Ibn al-Marzubān, but this—despite its weakness—is a tadlīs [concealment of the source], and even though they mentioned his narration from ʿIkrimah, he did not explicitly state hearing from him as you see, and al-Haythamī criticized it with this and with Ibn Abī Laylá (4/424). And among what supports this wording: "the sky" is the ḥadīth of Kaʿb ibn Mālik who said: A slave girl came tending my sheep, and a wolf ate a sheep, so I struck the face of the slave girl, and I regretted it, so I came to the Messenger of Allāh (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) and said: O Messenger of Allāh! If I knew she was a believer, I would have freed her. The Messenger of Allāh (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) said to the slave girl: "Who am I?" she said: The Messenger of Allāh. He said: "And who is Allāh?" she said: The One who is in the sky. The Messenger of Allāh (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) said: "Free her, for she is a believer." It was recorded by al-Ṭabarānī in "al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr" (19/98/193) and "al-Awsaṭ" (2/171/1/7712) through the route of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Shabīb: narrated to us by Dāwūd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Jaʿfarī: narrated to us by Ḥātim ibn Ismāʿīl from Ibn ʿAjlān from Zayd ibn Aslam from Ibn Kaʿb ibn Mālik from his father with it, and he said: "No one narrated it from Ibn ʿAjlān except Ḥātim, nor from Ḥātim except Dāwūd al-Jaʿfarī, and it is not narrated from Kaʿb except through this isnād."