Signs & Miracles · Signs Seen in Public
Water flowing from between his fingers
Handle with care. Do not exaggerate the numbers or merge separate incidents into one bigger story. Say which incident you are quoting.
In short
- 1.Anas, who served the Prophet for ten years, says he saw water pour from between his fingers until the people made wudu.
- 2.At Hudaybiyyah, Jabir says the whole company drank and used it — and when asked how many they were, he said fourteen hundred.
- 3.These are not private stories. They are reported by men who were in the crowd, to crowds.
- 4.Both are in Sahih al-Bukhari, graded sahih.
The claim being examined
On more than one occasion an army ran out of water, and water is reported to have flowed from between the Prophet's fingers until everyone had drunk.
The Islamic position
This is one of the strongest reported signs because of the sheer number of witnesses — hundreds, and on one occasion around fourteen hundred men.
Analysis
Bukhari records the incident at al-Zawra' from Anas ibn Malik and the incident at al-Hudaybiyyah from Jabir ibn Abdullah, who is asked directly how many people were present and answers that they were fourteen hundred. The evidential weight here rests on the size and openness of the audience: a fabricated claim of this kind, circulated among the very people said to have been present, is unusually easy to contradict. Scholars therefore treat mass-witnessed signs as a separate class from reports carried by a single narrator.
From the Sunnah
Anas said: I saw water flowing from underneath his fingers, and the people performed ablution until the last of them.
Jabir said: the people were thirsty on the day of al-Hudaybiyyah. He placed his hand in the vessel and water began to gush from between his fingers. We drank and used it. It was asked: how many were you? He said: fourteen hundred.
Sources
Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari · Sahih al-Bukhari 3576; Sahih al-Bukhari 4152
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