The Remaining Nine (Actually Twelve) Accounts: Why They Could Not Be Verified, and Why They Still Matter

Introduction — The Final Part of the Series' Verification Chapter

The book «من عجائب العلاج بالصدقة» (Amazing Accounts of Healing Through Sadaqah) compiles a total of eighteen real-life accounts. In the research phase of this series, an effort was made to verify each account separately and independently. In the earlier parts of this verification chapter, six accounts have already been discussed — two accounts (Hakim Abu Abdullah and Ibn al-Mubarak) were found to be independently verifiable in classical history books; three accounts came from the published writings of a single compiler, Shaykh Sulayman al-Mufarrij, which, although at least confirmed as a source, leave the underlying accounts unverifiable; and one account came from the own spoken narration of a specific, independently identifiable living scholar (Shaykh Abdul Hadi Badla).

Excluding these six leaves exactly twelve accounts — accounts number 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17. The word "nine" in the title of this article was already used in the first part of this series, when the plan followed the initial division of the research; now, after the full verification, the actual number is twelve — and for the sake of honesty, this difference is made clear right here. All twelve of these accounts share one thing in common: none of them has a name, a date, a place, or a traceable source. In this article they are presented briefly one by one — exactly as much as is stated in the book's own words, without adding any extra detail.

First Category — Unnamed Accounts Told Entirely in the Third Person (Status D)

Of these twelve, nine accounts — numbers 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15 and 16 — received Status D in this research, meaning "there is no way to verify." All of them are told in the third person, with no names mentioned, and no dates or sources. Below they are shown in several groups according to their subject matter.

Recovery from cancer. The third account states that a man who had cancer travelled all over the world looking for treatment, but nothing benefited him. After that, he gave sadaqah to a woman who was a mother of orphans (a mother caring for several orphans), and then he recovered. The book gives no name, date or source — it is a completely anonymous account that begins with "it is mentioned that."

Having a child and mental well-being. The fifth account speaks of a woman whom doctors had told there was no possibility at all of conceiving. Within three months of giving sadaqah to a poor woman and asking her to make dua for a righteous child, she conceived twin boys. In the twelfth account, a woman was suffering from a serious mental illness; a relative of hers secretly gave sadaqah to a poor, righteous man with the intention of her recovery and asked for his dua — within a few days, even before anyone in the family knew it, people came forward to help her, and she recovered. Neither account has a name or a time period.

Critically ill patients and sudden recovery. There are four accounts of this kind. In the seventh account, a boy's knife injured his sister's eye severely; specialist doctors in Riyadh said the hope of the cornea recovering was slim; the mother gave away her only piece of gold as sadaqah and made dua — a few days later the surgery succeeded and the girl regained her full eyesight without any scar. In the ninth account, a young man was admitted to hospital with a serious illness and the doctor told his mother there was no hope of recovery; the mother sold all her gold and gave it as sadaqah, and within a few days signs of recovery appeared. In the fourteenth account, a generous stranger, hearing of a seriously ill woman admitted to intensive care, sacrificed a camel, dedicated its reward to the woman, and distributed the meat among the poor — within a few days the woman recovered. In the sixteenth account, a doctor told a husband that his wife's condition was critical and there was no hope of recovery; the husband immediately gave away all his wife's gold as sadaqah, and a few hours later the doctor said that signs of improvement had appeared at exactly that time. What these four accounts share is a hospital, a hopeless prognosis, and, right after it, the coincidence of sadaqah and recovery — but none of them has a name, a date, a hospital name, or any document.

Exceptional and fairy-tale-style accounts. The sixth and fifteenth accounts are of a somewhat different kind — here the account itself contains something more symbolic or miraculous than an ordinary account of treatment. In the sixth account, while a well-known female da'iyah was speaking about the effect of sadaqah, one of the listeners said that her father had once given milk to a needy man in a tent; years later, when her father's car broke down and he came close to dying of thirst, someone who looked exactly like that man came and saved him by giving him milk to drink — the book itself conjectures that this may have been an angel. Here the chain of narration is hearsay across two levels (female da'iyah → woman listener → her father), and neither party is unnamed. In the fifteenth account, during a discussion about the virtue of sadaqah at a women's gathering, a woman gave her valuable necklace for sadaqah; when the goldsmith went to weigh the necklace, he found instruments of sihr inside it, and after they were removed, the woman recovered from her long-standing suffering. This research has noted that "finding hidden sihr in jewellery given to be sold" is a common genre trope of ruqyah stories, which recurs in various tales; this particular account could not be found independently anywhere else.

For each of these nine accounts, the same single conclusion applies — no name, no date, no place (a few contain only a hint of "Riyadh" or a hospital, which is not enough), and no source could be found outside the book. There is no way to regard them as historical records or evidence.

Second Category — Told in the First Person, but the Narrator Is Unnamed (Status C)

The fourth and seventeenth accounts are slightly different — in these two, the central person of the account is telling their own experience in the first person, not third-person hearsay. For this reason they have been given Status C — slightly different from Status D, but still unverifiable, because the narrator remains anonymous.

In the fourth account, a woman from Algeria who lives in Saudi Arabia says in her own account that she had cancer and came close to death. She used to spend whatever she earned from embroidery work on orphans. She says that in both places, Algeria and Saudi Arabia, strangers came forward to help with her treatment, and in the end she recovered completely. Here there are three details — her nationality, her country of residence, and her profession — which are somewhat more specific compared with the other accounts. But she has no name, so despite these extra details there is no way to identify her and verify the account.

In the seventeenth account, a well-known female da'iyah says in the first person that while she was in the Haram, pain began in a neglected molar; not wanting to waste time going to a doctor, she gave sadaqah to a female worker at the Haram; within a short time the pain stopped, and ever since, according to the book's account, the tooth has not hurt again "up to this moment." Here too a specific place (Masjid al-Haram) is mentioned, but instead of a name there is only a title, "a well-known female da'iyah" — so it cannot be matched to any particular person, lecture or interview.

So the difference between Status C and D is subtle but important: in D the account is heard from someone else, while in C the speaker tells it as their own story — but in both cases the final result remains the same. Without knowing the speaker's identity, no independent verification of the truth of their words is possible.

Special Caution — The Thirteenth Account: The Claim That a Kidney Disease "Completely Vanished"

It would not be right to place the thirteenth account in the same row as the other eleven accounts of this article — and for this very reason it has been given a separate section.

The book says that a woman was afflicted with kidney failure and announced a reward of twenty thousand riyals in search of a kidney donor. A poor woman agreed only because of financial need, but on the appointed day she broke down in tears — admitting her own helplessness. The patient comforted her and said that the money should stay with her and that there was no need to give the kidney. In the book's words, a few days later, when the patient returned to the hospital, it is claimed that the tests found "no trace of the disease."

It needs to be stated clearly why this account should be viewed separately and with caution. In almost all of the other eleven accounts, the claim is that "recovery was faster than normal" or that "there was improvement from a hopeless condition" — although these may sound medically unusual, they leave room for explanation in terms of the nature of the illness and the timing. But the claim of the thirteenth account is of a different nature — here it is being said that an organic disease like kidney failure was completely absent in the tests, as if it had never been there at all. From the viewpoint of medical science, this kind of claim is an extraordinary claim — and no extraordinary claim should be accepted without at least minimally verifiable evidence.

This account has no name, no date, no hospital name, and no mention of a test report — that is, the amount of identifying information is zero. In this research's own verification list, this account has been given not Status D like the rest, but a separate Status E — meaning "questionable/demands extra caution." This status has been deliberately kept apart from the general "D" category of the other eleven accounts, so that the reader does not easily swallow it as "just another ordinary anecdote."

One point needs to be made clear here: this does not mean the story is false, or that the woman who is described as having brought it about deceived anyone. It means only this: there is no evidence in support of such a medically extraordinary claim, and there is no way to verify it. This story should be read with more doubt than at least the other eleven stories. It is more honest to remember it as "a completely unverifiable and unusual claim" than to assume it is "probably true."

Testimony versus Evidence

In the first part of this series, a five-layer framework was set out, separating the five different claims hidden inside the sentence "Illness is cured through sadaqah." All twelve stories discussed in this article belong to the fifth claim of that framework: stories told by people who say "I was healed through sadaqah," which is the weakest level of evidence. Of the eighteen stories examined in this series in total, twelve (two-thirds) fall into this level, and none of them could be verified independently.

This number, twelve out of eighteen, carries an important message, and because this message is easy to misunderstand, it needs to be stated clearly. It does not mean that these twelve stories are false or made up. Many people sincerely believe that they saw good things happen in their lives after giving sadaqah, and there is no reason to assume that their belief comes from a dishonest motive. But it means exactly this: these stories cannot serve as proof of anything. An anonymous story with no name, date, place or source cannot establish the claim that "sadaqah cured this particular illness." This is because there is no way to verify whether the event happened at all, whether it happened exactly as it is told, or whether there was some other explanation behind it (natural recovery, a wrong diagnosis, a coincidence in timing).

Even so, these stories are not completely worthless. They carry a different kind of value: they are genuinely significant as testimony and as da'wah material. They show that many Muslims sincerely believe sadaqah has brought good into their lives, and that this belief encourages them to be more generous and to turn more toward Allah. This emotion and devotion are real and deserve respect. The aim of this article is never to belittle these people's belief or experience.

But it is important to understand the difference between the two words "testimony" and "evidence." A simple comparison can make this clear: when an advertisement for a product shows a customer's interview, "I benefited from using this product," we generally understand that this one testimony does not scientifically prove the product's effectiveness. In the same way, reading an anonymous story of the kind "I was healed through sadaqah" and reaching the conclusion that "sadaqah cures this illness" is the same kind of error in reasoning.

The practical advice for a thoughtful reader is just this: read these stories, be inspired by them, and take them as encouragement toward sadaqah, because sadaqah itself is an excellent amal of well-established virtue (part of the first and second claims of this series, which is firmly established in the Qur'an and hadith). But never take a story of this kind and conclude that "if I give sadaqah, my particular illness will be cured," and do not use these stories as a reason to stop treatment or to ignore a doctor's advice. In the case of a medically extraordinary claim like the thirteenth story, this caution is even more important. Testimony can touch the heart and strengthen faith, but it cannot take the place of evidence.

References

Stories from the book (no external source found)

• Stories 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15 and 16 — there is no source or reference other than the book's own account (Status D); in line with the instructions of this research phase, they were not searched extensively because they are low-priority, unsourced testimony.
• Stories 4 and 17 — told in the first person, but because the narrator is anonymous they cannot be independently verified (Status C).
• Story 13 — completely anonymous and a medically unusual claim, so it is marked with extra caution (Status E).

Other reliable sources

• Amazing Stories of Treatment through Sadaqah (مِن عجائبِ العلاجِ بالصَّدَقة), a group of students of knowledge (compilers) — the original Arabic book and its Bangla translation (the only source of these twelve stories)
• The foundational research report of this series and the story-based verification list (story-verification-table) — prepared through independent searching in Arabic, 2026-09-21

This article is prepared on the basis of the stories narrated in the book «من عجائب العلاج بالصدقة» and an independent verification of the sources of those stories.