Sahih Muslim preserves Imran ibn Husain رضي الله عنه saying that he used to receive an extraordinary greeting, that it ceased after cautery, and that it returned after he abandoned cautery. Muslim’s wording leaves the greeters unnamed. Al-Bayhaqi and al-Hakim preserve classical reports that explicitly identify the greeting as coming from angels. The event can therefore be published with high confidence, while keeping the Sahih Muslim wording and the later explicit identification in separate source layers.
Imran then underwent cautery as a form of treatment. According to the Muslim report, after he was cauterized the greeting stopped. Later he abandoned cautery, and the greeting returned. The hadith presents this sequence plainly without explaining a hidden mechanism and without turning it into a general medical rule. Its point is the extraordinary experience reported by Imran and the change he himself associated with the treatment.
A parallel Muslim report places his disclosure during the illness from which he later died. Imran called Mutarrif and told him that he was entrusting him with reports that might benefit him afterward. He instructed him to keep the matter private while Imran remained alive, but permitted him to narrate it after his death. In that setting he again stated that he had been greeted. This gives the story a quiet, personal character: Imran did not present the experience for public display during his life.
The identity of the greeters becomes explicit in classical supporting material. Al-Bayhaqi titles a chapter about Imran seeing or hearing the angels, their greeting him, the greeting disappearing when he underwent cautery, and its return after he left it. In the report cited there, the returning phenomenon is directly explained as the greeting of the angels. Al-Hakim preserves another report in which Imran tells Mutarrif that angels used to greet him near his head, at the house and by the chamber door, and that the greeting disappeared after cautery and later returned.
The source layers should remain distinct. Sahih Muslim securely establishes the extraordinary greeting and its interruption and return, but its literal wording is passive. Al-Bayhaqi and al-Hakim supply the explicit angel identification. The most careful public presentation therefore tells the sahih core first and then adds that classical reports identify the greeters as angels. No medical doctrine, universal rule about cautery, or dramatic unseen detail should be invented beyond what these sources actually preserve.
Conclusion
The strongest evidence preserves an extraordinary greeting experienced by Imran ibn Husain رضي الله عنه; classical supporting reports explicitly identify it as the greeting of angels. Keeping those source layers separate allows the story to remain both meaningful and evidence-accurate.