On the authority of Ali, peace be upon him, who said: I said to the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him: "Your uncle, the misguided old man, has died." He said: "Go and bury your father, then do not do anything until you come to me." So I went and buried him, then came to him, and he ordered me to perform the major ablution, and he supplicated for me. (1)

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(1) Good (hasan). Nājiyah ibn Kaʿb was declared reliable by al-ʿIjlī, and Ibn Maʿīn said of him: sound (ṣāliḥ), and likewise Ibn Shāhīn said in "al-Thiqāt." Ibn Abī Ḥātim in "al-Jarḥ wa-l-Taʿdīl" 8/486 gave a biographical entry for Nājiyah ibn Kaʿb al-ʿAnazī, brother of Salmā bint Kaʿb Abī Khufāf, and asked his father about him, and he said: a shaykh. Then he gave a biographical entry for Nājiyah ibn al-Mughīrah, and asked his father: "Which of the two is more reliable, Nājiyah ibn Kaʿb or Nājiyah ibn al-Mughīrah?" He said: "Both are reliable." If Nājiyah ibn Kaʿb al-ʿAnazī is other than Nājiyah ibn Kaʿb al-Asadī, then what Abū Ḥātim meant by the second was the one he declared reliable, namely al-Asadī. And this is what is most likely, just as al-Bukhārī and Muslim did in distinguishing between the two, except that they named the father of the ʿAnazī as Khufāf, not Kaʿb.

Ibn Ḥibbān said in "al-Majrūḥīn": He was a righteous shaykh, except that there is some confusion in his hadith that does not resemble the hadith of reliable peers reporting from Ali, so I do not find it pleasing to use him as evidence when he is alone in a report. As for what agrees with the reliable narrators, if someone uses him as evidence, I hope that he has not been impugned by that action. We say: it is so, for he was not alone in it; others followed him in it, as will come.

Ibn al-Jārūd (550) and Ḍiyāʾ al-Maqdisī in "al-Mukhtārah" (745) declared this hadith authentic. Al-Dhahabī said in "Tārīkh al-Islām" — section on the Prophetic biography — p. 235: a good, connected hadith. Al-Rāfiʿī said in his "Amālī": a firmly established, well-known hadith, as transmitted by Ibn al-Mulaqqin in "Tuḥfat al-Muḥtāj" (868).

Al-Nasāʾī (190) also transmitted it via the chain of Shuʿbah ibn al-Ḥajjāj, from Abū Isḥāq, with it. It is in "Musnad Aḥmad" (759).

Al-Ṭabarānī transmitted it in "al-Awsaṭ" (5490) via the chain of Furāt ibn Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Qazzāz, from Nājiyah ibn Kaʿb, with it, and its chain is good. Al-Dāraquṭnī in "al-ʿIlal" 4/146 pointed to this corroboration.

Aḥmad (807), Abū Yaʿlā (424), Ibn ʿAdī 2/738, and al-Bayhaqī 1/304 and 305 also transmitted it via the chain of al-Ḥasan ibn Yazīd al-Aṣamm, from al-Suddī Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, from ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. And al-Ḥasan ibn Yazīd — even though his hadith from al-Suddī is not strong, as Ibn ʿAdī said in "al-Kāmil" — his hadith is suitable for corroboration.