The Messenger of Allah ﷺ heard a man saying, "O Allah, I ask You by my testimony that You are Allah, there is no god but You, the One, the Eternal Refuge, who has not begotten and was not begotten, and to whom none is equal."The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, "You have asked Allah by the name which, when He is asked by it, He gives, and when He is called upon by it, He answers."
أن رسول الله ﷺ سمع رجلا يقول: اللهم إني أسألك أني أشهد أنك أنت الله لا إله إلا أنت الأحد الصمد الذي لم يلد، ولم يولد، ولم يكن له كفوا أحد. فقال رسول الله ﷺ: لقد سألت الله بالاسم الذي إذا سئل به أعطى، وإذا دعى به أجاب.
Abu Dawud (1493, 1494) narrated it through two routes, one from Yahya, from Malik bin Mughul, and the other from Zayd bin Hubab, who said, Malik bin Mughul narrated to us. Ibn Majah (3857) narrated it from Waki, from Malik bin Mughul. Tirmidhi (3475) narrated it from Zayd bin Hubab, from Zuhayr bin Muawiya, from Malik bin Mughul, from Abdullah bin Burayda, from his father, who related the hadith.Tirmidhi said, Zayd said, "I later mentioned it to Zuhayr bin Muawiya years afterward, and he said, 'Abu Ishaq narrated to me, from Malik bin Mughul.'" Zayd said, "Then I mentioned it to Sufyan Thawri, and he narrated it to me from Malik." Tirmidhi said, "It is hasan gharib. Sharik narrated this hadith from Abu Ishaq, from Burayda, from his father, but Abu Ishaq Hamdani actually took it from Malik bin Mughul, and he concealed this by using tadlis, and Sharik narrated this hadith from Abu Ishaq." This is the end of Tirmidhi's statement.It appears from Tirmidhi's statement that Abu Ishaq, who is a mudallis, practiced tadlis in this instance, and the one who narrated from him, Sharik, has weak memory. However, this tadlis does not harm the hadith, since Sufyan Thawri and Waki also narrated it from Malik bin Mughul, and Zayd bin Hubab likewise heard it from Malik bin Mughul after having first heard it from Sufyan Thawri.For this reason, many scholars have graded this hadith sahih, among them Ibn Hibban (891) and Hakim (1/504), both of whom narrated it through Malik bin Mughul. Hakim said, "Sahih according to the standard of the two Shaykhs (Bukhari and Muslim)." He also said, "It has a corroborating witness that is sahih according to the standard of Muslim." He said, "Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Abdullah Saghar informed us, Abu Bakr bin Abu Dunya narrated to us, Hasan bin Sabbah narrated to us, Aswad bin Amir narrated to us, Sharik informed us, from Abu Ishaq, from Ibn Burayda, from his father."Munziri said in Mukhtasar Abu Dawud (2/145), "Our shaykh, the hafiz Abu Hasan Maqdisi, said, 'This is an isnad against which no criticism can be raised, and I do not know of any hadith narrated on this subject with a better isnad than this one. It demonstrates the invalidity of the position of those who deny that Allah has a name which is the Greatest Name.'"