Chapter 244

Calling out to a person whose name one does not know

Remembrance 1
ONE SHOULD CALL to a person whose name he does not know with words that will not hurt him, and in which there are no lies or excessive humility. One should use expressions like: ‘O brother,’ ‘O scholar,’ ‘O my master,’ ‘O owner of a certain robe,’ ‘O owner of certain shoes,’ or of a certain horse, camel, sword or spear and the like of this, according to the circumstances of the person calling out and the one to whom he calls.
We relate in the Sunans of Abū Dāwūd, an-Nasā’ī and Ibn Mājah, with a ḥasan isnād, that Bashīr ibn Ma‘bad Honorific symbol, known as Ibn al-Khaṣṣāṣiyyah, reported: “While I was walking with the Prophet Honorific symbol he saw a man walking over graves with his sandals on. He said ‘You with the sandals! Woe to you, take off your sandals’” [1].—and he related the hadith in full.
I say that an-ni‘āl as-sibtiyyah with a kasrah on the sīn means the [kind of sandals] without hair on them.
We have related in the book of Ibn as-Sunnī that Jāriyah al-Anṣārī Honorific symbol, a Companion—written with a jīm—narrated: “When I was with the Prophet Honorific symbol and he could not remember the name of a man he said: ‘O son of ‘Abdullāh’ (‘Yā Ibn ‘Abdillāh”).” [2].

References

[1] Abū Dāwūd (3230), an-Nasā’ī (4/296), Ibn Mājah (1568).
[2] Ibn as-Sunnī (1–4).