This alongside all the other articles on the stories of the prophets has been taken from Ṣaḥīḥ Qiṣaṣ al Anbiyāʾ (Authentic Stories of the Prophets) by Salim ibn ʿId al Hilali who revised Ibn Kathir’s (Qiṣas al Anbiyāʾ) Stories of the Prophets by removing weak, fabricated, repeated reports and unreliable Isra’ili reports, he only kept the Quran verses, sound hadiths and reports from the Salaf.
The story of Uzayr
It is well known that Uzayr was called a prophet from the prophets of Banu Israil, and that he lived in the time between Dawud and Sulayman and between Zakariyya and Yahya, and that when there no longer remained in Banu Israil anyone who memorised the Tawrah, Allah inspired him to memorise it, so he recited it in full to Banu Israil.
Ibn Asakir related from Ibn Abbas that he asked Abd Allah ibn Salam about the words of Allah, Exalted:
وقالت اليهود عزير ابن الله
“The Jews said, ‘Uzayr is the son of Allah.’” (at Tawbah 9/30)
He said to him, “Why did they say that?” So Ibn Salam mentioned to him how it had been that he wrote the Tawrah for Banu Israil from memory, and that Banu Israil said, “Musa was not able to bring the Tawrah to us except in a written copy, and Uzayr has brought it to us without a book.” So some groups among them hurled that saying at him and said, “Uzayr is the son of Allah.” (In his Tarikh 40/325.)
For this reason many of the ulama say that the uninterrupted transmission of the Tawrah was cut off in the time of Uzayr, and this is very reasonable if Uzayr was not a prophet, as was said by Ata ibn Abi Rabah and al Hasan al Basri.
It is established in the Sahih that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “I am the one with the greatest right to the son of Mary, and the prophets are paternal brothers, there is no prophet between him and me.”
It has been narrated from Ibn Abbas, Mujahid, and al Hasan al Basri that this prophet was Uzayr, and Allah knows best. (None of them are authentic)
Side Note: The best position to take is to say we do not know if he was a prophet or not.
