A blind man came to the Prophet ﷺ and said, "Pray to Allah to restore my sight."He replied, "If you wish, I will pray for you, and if you wish, I will delay that, for it would be better."The man said, "Pray for me."So he instructed him to perform ablution well, pray two units of prayer, and make this supplication, "O Allah, I ask You and turn to You through Your Prophet Muhammad, the Prophet of mercy. Muhammad, I have turned through you to my Lord regarding this need of mine, that it may be granted. O Allah, accept his intercession on my behalf."
أن رجلا ضرير البصر أتى النبي ﷺ فقال: ادع الله أن يعافيني قال: إن شئت دعوت لك وإن شئت أخرت ذاك فهو خير. فقال: ادعه فأمره أن يتوضأ فيحسن وضوءه ويصلي ركعتين ويدعو بهذا الدعاء: اللهم إني أسألك وأتوجه إليك بنبيك محمد نبي الرحمة، يا محمد إني توجهت بك إلى ربي في حاجتي هذه فتقضي لي، اللهم شفعه في.
Tirmidhi (3578), Nasai in Amal al-Yawm wal-Layla (659), Ibn Majah (1385), and Ahmad (17240) narrated it, and Ibn Khuzayma (1219) and Hakim (1/519) graded it sahih, all of them through the route of Shuba, from Abu Jafar Madani, from Umara bin Khuzayma bin Thabit, from Uthman bin Hunayf, who related it.Its chain is sahih. Abu Jafar Madani is Umayr bin Yazid bin Umayr Khatmi. There has been disagreement over him, and the correct version is the hadith of Shuba, as Abu Zura said. See Ilal Ibn Abu Hatim (2064). Tirmidhi said, "This is a hasan sahih hadith, gharib, we do not know it except from this route, from the hadith of Abu Jafar, who is Khatmi." Ibn Majah said, "Abu Ishaq said, this is a sahih hadith." Hakim said, "This is a hadith sahih in its chain."I say, it is as they said, for Abu Jafar Madani is trustworthy, deemed reliable by Ibn Main, Nasai, Ibn Mahdi, and others.There is nothing in this hadith indicating the permissibility of seeking intermediation in supplication through the rank of the Prophet ﷺ or of any other righteous person, since it shows that the Prophet ﷺ taught the blind man to seek intermediation through him in his supplication, and the blind man did so and his sight was restored. It provides evidence for the third type of legitimate intermediation, which is intermediation through the supplication of a righteous man.So the blind man's saying, "O Allah, I turn to You through Your Prophet," means through the supplication of Your Prophet, with the object of the genitive construction omitted, which is a known usage in the Arabic language, as in His saying, "And ask the town in which we were" [Yusuf 12:82], meaning the people of the town and the companions of the caravan.As for what has become well known among some people, "If you ask Allah, ask Him by my rank, for my rank with Allah is great," this is false. It has not appeared in the books of hadith at all, as Sheikh Islam bin Taymiya pointed out in Qaida Jaleela fi al-Tawassul wal-Waseela (p. 252).These, then, are the three types of legitimate intermediation, whose legitimacy is established by the Book and the Sunnah, namely, first, intermediation through the beautiful names of Allah and His exalted attributes, second, intermediation through righteous deeds, and third, intermediation through the supplication of a living righteous man.And success comes from Allah.