And someone put them into verse as follows:
“There is imposed upon every mukallaf a knowledge
Of Prophets in detail, who have been named
In that document of ours [i.e., the Qur’an]. Of them are eight
After ten [i.e., eighteen]. And there remain seven who are
Idris, Hud, Shu‘ayb, Salih, and similarly,
Dhu-l-Kifl, Adam, with the Chosen One [Muhammad] they close.”
And it is necessary to confess that the Companions (sahibs) of the Prophet are the most excellent of the generations. Then their followers (tabi‘s); then the followers of their followers. And the most excellent of the Companions is Abu Bakr, then Umar, then Uthman, then Ali—in this order. But al-Alqami said that our Lady Fatima and her brother, our Lord Ibrahim, were absolutely more excellent than the Companions, including the Four [Khalifas]. And our Lord Malik [ibn Anas] was wont to say, “There is none more excellent than the children of the Prophet.” This is that the confession of which is incumbent; and we will meet God confessing it, if it is His Will.
And of that the confession of which is also necessary, is that the Prophet was born in Mecca and died in al-Madina. It is incumbent on fathers that they teach that to their children. Al-Ajhuri said, “It is incumbent on the individual that he know the genealogy of the Prophet on his father’s side and on his mother’s.” A statement of it will come in our Conclusion, if God will. The learned have said, “Every individual ought to know the number of the children of the Prophet and the order in which they were born, for an individual ought to know his Lords, and they are the Lords of the People.” But they do not explain, in what I have seen, whether that is required (mawjub) or desired (mandub); the analogy (qiyas) of things similar to it would say it was required. His children were seven, three male and four female, according to the right view. Their order of birth was: al-Qasim, he was the first of his children, then Zaynab, then Ruqayya, then Fatima, then Umm Kulthum, then Abd Allah, he had the to-names (laqab) at-Tayyib and at-Tahir, which are to-names of Abd Allah, not names of two other different persons. These were all children of our Lady Khadija. And the seventh was our Lord Ibrahim, born of Mariya, the Copt. So it stands. Let us now return to the conclusion of the Articles.
The Forty-second is the Veracity (sidq) of the Apostles in all their sayings.