Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq

"The Prophet was given the strength of forty, or forty-five, in sexual intercourse."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Razzaq records this in a chapter titled "The strength of the Prophet", through Ma'mar from Ibn Tawus from his father Tawus. Tawus was a Successor who never met the Prophet, so the report is mursal (it skips the eyewitness), and a narrator adds, "I am the one who is unsure" whether it was forty or forty-five. No published grading of this report was located. Ibn Sa'd's biography gives the topic its own heading, "What the Messenger of Allah was given of strength for intercourse". There Tawus's saying appears again ("the strength of forty men in intercourse"), Mujahid says the Prophet was given the sexual capacity of forty-odd men and every man of Paradise that of eighty, and a mursal report from Safwan b. Sulaym has the Prophet say: "Gabriel brought me a pot, I ate from it, and I was given the strength of forty men in intercourse." al-Albani grades that last version batil (false).

Why this is a problem

The canonical starting point is modest. In Bukhari 268, asked whether the Prophet had the strength to visit all his wives in one round, Anas says, "We used to say he was given the strength of thirty." In the next generation, leading Successors such as Tawus and Mujahid say forty, or forty-five, and specify that it was sexual strength. Ibn Sa'd adds a heavenly origin: Gabriel brought the food that gave it. al-Tabarani has "forty in grip and in intercourse".

The numbers grow as the reports move further from any witness, and a narrator in the chain cannot even remember which number was said. A prophet's sexual stamina was treated as a miracle and a mark of distinction, worthy of a chapter heading in two of the earliest major collections.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that only Bukhari's "thirty" is authentic, and that it is the Companions' way of speaking about his vigour, not a claim of revelation. The forty and forty-five reports are mursal, and the Gabriel's-pot version is graded false or fabricated by al-Albani. Muslim scholars have called such reports a slander on the Prophet: of one related report, about a dish of harisa that gave him strength, a Darul Iftaa Birmingham answer says, "This is a fabricated hadith. It is, in fact, slander upon the prophet."

Why it fails

The authenticity point is fair, and this entry does not present the forty reports as sound. But they were not invented by critics of Islam. Abd al-Razzaq, Ibn Sa'd and al-Tabarani collected them, and major Successors who studied under the Companions repeated them as a known virtue of the Prophet.

Rejecting the escalation does not remove the core idea, which is in Bukhari itself: the Companions boasted that their prophet had the sexual strength of thirty men. Later reports only raise the number. Calling the forty-man version "slander" sits awkwardly with an authentic thirty-man version that makes the same kind of claim.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 14049, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 506
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 14982, Dar al-Ta'sil ed., vol. 7 p. 430 (same report)
• Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, Dar Sadir ed., vol. 1 p. 374
• al-Tabarani, al-Mu'jam al-Awsat 567, Dar al-Haramayn ed., vol. 1 p. 178
• Bukhari 268
• Grading: al-Albani, al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 1685: batil (false), on Ibn Sa'd's Gabriel's-pot version
• Grading: al-Albani, Da'if al-Jami' 63: mawdu' (fabricated), on Ibn Sa'd's version
• Grading: al-'Iraqi, al-Mughni 'an haml al-asfar: sanaduhu da'if (weak chain), on al-Tabarani's 'forty in grip and intercourse'

"It used to be done: a man would make his slave-girl lawful to his slave, his son, his brother and his father, and a woman [hers] to her husband ... And it has reached me that a man would send his slave-girl to his guest."

What the hadith says

These are statements of Successors, not sayings of the Prophet. Abd al-Razzaq collects them in a chapter titled "A man makes his slave-girl lawful to another man". The Meccan jurist Ata b. Abi Rabah describes the practice, adds "I do not like that it be done, and nothing about it has reached me from a reliable source", and then mentions the guest. The Yemeni jurist Tawus says: "She is more lawful than food. If she gives birth, her child belongs to the man she was made lawful to, and she remains her first master's." In the same chapter Tawus reports Ibn Abbas allowing a man to have a slave-girl that his wife, daughter or sister makes lawful to him, though the report ends with Ibn Abbas adding, 'let him do it between her thighs'. On the other side, Ibn Umar tells a man whose mother lent him her slave-girl that she is lawful to him only by marrying her, buying her or being given her, and al-Zuhri says the borrower is flogged a hundred lashes. No critic's grading of these reports was located.

Why this is a problem

In the generation after the Companions, the Meccan jurist Ata reports that a slave-woman's sexual use used to be lent by her owner: to his son, his father, his own slave, a guest. Ata disliked it; the Yemeni jurist Tawus approved it. Tawus, who transmits from Ibn Abbas in the same chapter, approved without reservation, and the chapter attributes a similar permission to Ibn Abbas himself. The child went to the borrower; the woman went back to her owner.

Look at what the two sides argue about. Those who allow the practice and those who forbid it agree that she can be used for sex by whoever holds the right. They disagree only about how that right is transferred. Ibn Umar's three lawful routes are marriage, purchase or gift. No one in the chapter asks what the woman wants.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Sunni law forbids "lending" a slave-girl. A slave-woman is lawful only to her owner or her husband, as Ibn Umar says in the same chapter, and al-Zuhri had the borrower flogged a hundred lashes. Ata himself disliked the practice and doubted the reports of it. The isolated opinions of a few Successors are not Islamic law.

Why it fails

The ban is real, and this entry does not claim that Islam permits lending. The question is what the ban protects. Ibn Umar's rule closes the loan and leaves purchase and gift open: a woman whose body can be sold or given away to a new man who may then have sex with her. al-Zuhri's hundred lashes punish an offence against the owner's exclusive right.

Tawus's approval is not a misunderstanding by an outsider. It is the reasoning of a respected jurist who followed the logic of ownership-based sex one step further than later law did. The later schools stopped at that step; they did not reject the logic.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12850, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 216 (Ata)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12851, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 216 (Tawus)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12852, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 216 (Ibn Abbas via Tawus)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12847-12849, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 pp. 215-216 (Ibn Umar and al-Zuhri forbid it)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12848, ed. al-A'zami (Ibn Umar: marry, buy or be given)

"Umar went and uncovered her shin. She said: Let go! Were you not the Commander of the Faithful, I would have struck your neck."

What the hadith says

This is a report about the caliph Umar and Ali, not a saying of the Prophet. Abd al-Razzaq places it in a chapter titled "The marriage of two minors". Ibn Uyayna reports from Amr b. Dinar from Abu Ja'far (Muhammad al-Baqir, Ali's great-grandson) that Umar asked Ali for his daughter. Ali said, "She is small." Umar was told, "He only means to refuse her," so he spoke to Ali again, and Ali said, "I will send her to you; if you are pleased, she is your wife." He sent her, and Umar uncovered her shin. The text does not name the girl; the tradition identifies Ali's daughter who married Umar as Umm Kulthum. Abu Ja'far was not present, so the chain is mursal (broken). The next report, from al-A'mash and also broken, has Ali dress her up and send her; Umar says "I am pleased" and takes hold of her shin. The report before it, from Ikrima, says Ali married to Umar "a daughter of his, a girl playing with the girls". No named critic's grading was located.

Why this is a problem

Three separate reports in one chapter on the marriage of minors concern the same marriage. Ikrima describes the bride as a girl still playing with other girls. In the other two the caliph asks for her, her father first calls her "small" or is accused of refusing, she is sent (in one version dressed up) for his approval, and he uncovers her leg or takes hold of it. Her answer, that she would have struck him if he were not the caliph, is the only sign of her own view, and it is a protest. The decision belongs to Umar: "if you are pleased, she is your wife."

The compiler did not file this as a scandal. He filed it as legal precedent for marrying minors. The story has long been argued over in Sunni-Shi'i polemic, but its preservation by Sunni compilers tells us what they considered an acceptable account of the second caliph.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is mursal, so it proves nothing about what Umar did. A man may look at a woman he intends to marry, and Sa'id b. Mansur records the story under the heading "Looking at a woman when intending marriage": the girl was sent precisely so that he could see her. In that version the people tell Umar that she 'has only just reached maturity' (innama adrakat). Shi'i scholars, for their part, dispute that the marriage happened at all.

Why it fails

Each chain is broken, but Abd al-Razzaq preserved three of them in his chapter on the marriage of minors: one calls the bride a girl still playing with other girls, and two have her sent to the caliph for his approval and her leg uncovered or seized. That is a story the early tradition found unremarkable.

The "looking before marriage" defence accepts the event and applies it to a child. Her father's first answer was that she was too young; she was sent anyway; and in both versions that describe the visit, the caliph's inspection is physical. The girl's own words show that she took it as an affront.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10352, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 163 (Abu Ja'far)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10353, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 163 (al-A'mash)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10351, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 162 (Ikrima)
• Sunan Sa'id b. Mansur 1698 (tohed numbering; edition not named)

"Those who went before used to order their young men to masturbate, and the woman likewise inserts something."

What the hadith says

These are opinions of Companions and Successors, not sayings of the Prophet. In a chapter titled "The concession on it", Abd al-Razzaq records the Successor Mujahid's statement above. Abd al-Razzaq's students asked him what "inserts something" meant, and he explained that she makes do with it instead of fornication. The chapter before it, "Masturbation", collects the other side. Ata disliked it but, asked if there was any report about it, said "I have not heard one." Ibn Umar, asked about it, said: "That is one who has intercourse with himself" (the Arabic verb, na'ik, is crude). Ibn Abbas, asked by a man who said "I play with my penis until I ejaculate", replied: "Marrying a slave-girl is better than it, and it is better than fornication." Amr b. Dinar said, "I see no harm in masturbation." No critic's grading of these reports was located.

Why this is a problem

A religion that claims to give complete guidance on everyday life left its earliest authorities without a ruling on a universal question. Asked directly, Ata said he knew of no report. The answers range from Mujahid's report that an earlier generation instructed its young men to masturbate and expected women to do the equivalent, through Ibn Abbas's middle position, to Ibn Umar's contempt. Later schools mostly forbade it.

Ibn Abbas's ranking is revealing in its own way: the better outlet than masturbation is marriage to a slave-girl. Even when the subject is a young man's private struggle, the solution offered is a woman of lower status.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that these are individual opinions, not revelation, and that the majority of jurists forbade masturbation (FatwaCentre, via islamqa.org), usually citing the Qur'an's praise of those who guard their private parts "except from their wives or what their right hands possess" (Q 23:5-6). Early disagreement on a minor issue is normal, and the later schools resolved it.

Why it fails

The response is fair that none of this binds Muslims today. But the verse used to forbid masturbation names two lawful outlets for a man: wives and "what their right hands possess", that is, slave-women. The prohibition and Ibn Abbas's advice rest on the same assumption.

The disagreement also matters beyond masturbation. Mujahid reports that an earlier generation told its young men to do it, while Ata says he heard nothing on the matter. The later majority position was built after the fact on a subject where the earliest sources were silent or split.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13593, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 391 (Mujahid)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13587, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 390 (Ibn Umar)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13588-13590, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 pp. 390-391 (Ibn Abbas)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13594, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 392 (Amr b. Dinar)

"Umar said: Then by Allah, I will never make you lawful to a free man after him."

What the hadith says

These are reports about the caliph Umar, two of them told by the Successor Qatada, who never met him, so those chains are broken (mursal); no critic's grading was located. In a chapter titled "A slave marries his mistress", Qatada says a woman took a slave-boy of hers as a concubine. Asked why, she said: "I thought that what is lawful to men from what the right hand possesses was lawful to me." Umar consulted the Prophet's Companions, who said, "She has interpreted the Book of Allah wrongly," and Umar pronounced the sentence above; the text adds that he seemed to be punishing her this way in place of the prescribed penalty, and ordered the slave not to go near her. In the next report a woman tells Abu Bakr she wants to free her slave and marry him, since he would cost her less than another husband; Abu Bakr sends her to Umar, who beats her until, in a phrase the narrator was unsure of, she lost control of her urine, then says: "The Arabs will remain well as long as their women are withheld." In a report from Jabir, Umar was about to stone a woman who had married her slave.

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an allows sex with "what your right hands possess" in general wording. This woman read it literally and applied it to herself. The Companions told her she had interpreted the Book of Allah wrongly. Male owners could take slave-women as concubines; a female owner who did the same with a male slave was condemned for ever to remain unmarried to any free man.

The asymmetry goes further than concubinage. A man who frees his slave-girl and marries her is praised in the canonical collections (Bukhari 97). In this report a woman who proposed the same thing with her male slave was beaten, and Umar's comment was that the Arabs would remain well as long as their women were withheld.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that ownership-concubinage is a man's right by consensus, because the verses on "what the right hand possesses" address men, as the Companions told her. Umar spared her the prescribed penalty because she acted from a genuine misunderstanding. The beating report is broken, its wording is uncertain, and in any case it records one caliph's severity, not a rule of the religion.

Why it fails

"The verses address men" restates the problem. Scripture grounded a sexual right in ownership and gave it to one sex. The woman's reading was exactly the plain sense of the words; the Companions corrected her by restricting it to men.

The chains are broken, but they are not isolated: Abd al-Razzaq has three reports in one chapter, including Jabir's, in which Umar treats a woman's sexual or marital choice involving her slave as a crime deserving stoning, lifelong exclusion or a beating. They show the early tradition's own idea of what a woman owner might and might not do.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12818, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 209
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13712, Dar al-Ta'sil ed., vol. 7 p. 163 (same report)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12819, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 pp. 209-210 (= Ta'sil 13713)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12817, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 209 (Jabir; = Ta'sil 13711)

"May Allah have mercy on Umar. Mut'a was nothing but a concession from Allah, Mighty and Majestic, by which He showed mercy to the community of Muhammad. Had he not forbidden it, no one would have needed fornication except a wretch."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 14021, the Meccan scholar Ata reports that Mu'awiya contracted a temporary marriage (mut'a) with a woman at Ta'if, and that Ibn Abbas, asked about it, said "Yes". Jabir b. Abd Allah told them: "Yes, we practised mut'a in the time of the Messenger of Allah, Abu Bakr and Umar", until late in Umar's caliphate a woman whom Amr b. Hurayth had taken in mut'a became pregnant and Umar questioned her. Ata then says he heard Ibn Abbas say the words quoted above, and adds that this is the mut'a of Q 4:24 ("such of them as you have enjoyed"), for a set term on set conditions. In the same chapter Ibn Jurayj reports, from an informant he calls "one whom I trust", that Ali said in Kufa: "Were it not for the opinion of Umar b. al-Khattab that came before, I would have ordered mut'a, and then none would commit fornication except a wretch" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq, end of 14029). These are the words of two Companions, not of the Prophet. No grading by a named critic was found for either saying, and the al-A'zami edition prints none. Ali's line comes through an unnamed informant, so its chain is broken. The "wretch" saying is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Sunni law holds that the Prophet himself forbade mut'a for ever, and the proof text most often cited puts that claim in Ali's mouth: Ali tells Ibn Abbas that the Prophet forbade mut'a at Khaybar (Bukhari 5115). In the Musannaf the same two men name a different author of the ban. Ibn Abbas calls mut'a a mercy from Allah that was lost through Umar's prohibition, and Ali says only Umar's earlier opinion stops him from ordering it again. Jabir, in the same report, says the Companions practised it under Abu Bakr and into Umar's reign, and in another report dates the end to a pregnancy that came to Umar's attention: "that was when he forbade it" (14029).

At stake is whether a form of sexual union was ended by God and His Prophet or by a caliph, and a major early collection preserves Companions who said it was the caliph. Ibn Abbas's reasoning also shows how thin the line between lawful and unlawful sex was in this view: a contract for a fixed term was Allah's mercy, and without it men would turn to fornication.

The Muslim response

The Sunni answer is that the Prophet forbade mut'a himself and Umar only enforced and publicised a ban that already existed. Companions such as Jabir, on this view, had not heard of the final prohibition and kept practising it until Umar made it known. Ali's own report in Bukhari 5115, with a sound chain in the most trusted collection, outweighs a line that reaches Ali only through an unnamed informant.

Why it fails

On Ali the response has a fair point: the Musannaf line about him is weakly transmitted, and the sound report says the opposite. But that report itself shows Ali correcting Ibn Abbas, and in the very next report in Bukhari Ibn Abbas, asked about mut'a, permits it, agreeing only when his freedman says this is for severe need when women are few (Bukhari 5116). The Ibn Abbas line here is not weakly sourced in the same way: Ata says he heard it from him, and no critic has been found rejecting it.

The "they had not heard" defence also asks a great deal: that Companions practised a permanently forbidden form of marriage through Abu Bakr's caliphate and much of Umar's without anyone stopping them, until a pregnancy reached the caliph. At the least, the early tradition did not agree on who ended mut'a.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 14021, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 pp. 496-497
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 14029 (start), ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 500
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq, end of 14029 (Ali's saying, unnumbered), ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 500
• Sahih al-Bukhari 5115
• Sahih al-Bukhari 5116

"A woman who had a lover would wear the two <em>qalibs</em> to make herself tall for her lover, so menstruation was cast upon them. Ibn Mas'ud used to say: "Put them back where Allah has put them back.""

What the hadith says

In a chapter on women attending congregational prayer, Abd al-Razzaq records the Companion Abd Allah b. Mas'ud saying that among the Children of Israel men and women used to pray together. A woman who had a khalil (a lover or intimate friend) would wear two qalibs to raise herself up for him, "so menstruation was cast upon them". Ibn Mas'ud drew the rule: "Put them back where Allah has put them back." Abd al-Razzaq's students asked him what the qalibs were, and he explained them as raised pieces of wood, platform shoes (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 5115). These are Ibn Mas'ud's words, not the Prophet's. On dorar.net, Ibn Hajar (Fath al-Bari 1/477) calls the chain of a shorter version sound: the women showed themselves off to the men, "so Allah cast menstruation upon them and barred them from the mosques". Al-Haythami (Majma' al-Zawa'id 2/38) says the narrators of al-Tabarani's version with the platform shoes are those of the Sahih (dorar.net). The closing rule is often quoted as a hadith of the Prophet. It is not: al-Albani says it has no basis as the Prophet's words (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 918; dorar.net).

Why this is a problem

Menstruation is a normal function of the female body. This report, transmitted from one of the most senior Companions with a chain that leading hadith scholars accepted, explains it as a penalty: women of an earlier people tried to catch their lovers' eyes during worship, and God responded by afflicting all of them. The text describes no sexual act, only women raising themselves to be seen. For that, God casts menstruation upon the women.

Ibn Mas'ud then turns the story into a rule for the present: put women at the back, where God put them. In this account, women's place behind men in worship is not just a matter of modesty or convenience. It follows from a divine punishment for female flirtation, and the punishment is written into women's bodies.

The Muslim response

Muslims point out that the Prophet himself spoke of menstruation as "a thing which Allah has ordained for the daughters of Adam" (Bukhari 294), so it did not begin with the Israelites and is not a punishment. Where a Companion's account of earlier peoples conflicts with the Prophet's words, the Prophet's words are preferred. The rule "put them back" is not a prophetic hadith, and Muslims are not bound by Ibn Mas'ud's story about the Israelites.

Why it fails

This answer is largely right about doctrine: the Prophet's saying in Bukhari is the authoritative one, and the "put them back" line is not his. The problem it leaves is historical. One of the best-known Companions taught the punishment story as fact, and he used it to justify a rule about where women stand. The tradition preserved this teaching with a chain that Ibn Hajar called sound and al-Haythami called made of Sahih narrators.

The same "put them back" line was later passed around as the Prophet's own words, which is why al-Albani had to rule on it. The idea that menstruation punished women for drawing men's eyes did not stay in one Companion's mouth. It circulated.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 5115, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 p. 149
• dorar.net: Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari 1/477; al-Haythami, Majma' al-Zawa'id 2/38 (takhrij names Abd al-Razzaq 5115)
• dorar.net: al-Albani, al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 918 on 'Akhkhiruhunna'
• Sahih al-Bukhari 294
• Grading: Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari 1/477: isnaduhu sahih (sound chain), for the version 'Allah cast menstruation on them and barred them from the mosques'
• Grading: al-Haythami, Majma' al-Zawa'id 2/38: rijaluhu rijal al-sahih (its narrators are those of the Sahih), for al-Tabarani's version with the platform shoes
• Grading: al-Albani, al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 918: la asla lahu marfu'an (no basis as the Prophet's words), for 'Put them back where Allah has put them back'

"These people have a covenant as long as they keep faith with you; when they do not keep faith with you, they have no covenant. So Umar crucified him."

What the hadith says

Awf b. Malik al-Ashja'i reports that a Jewish or Christian man goaded the mount of a Muslim woman, then threw dust over her, trying to force himself on her. The case was brought to Umar, who said that such people have a covenant only as long as they keep faith, "and Umar crucified him" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10167, repeated at 19216 and 19378). Ibn Abi Shayba has a fuller version through Suwayd b. Ghafala: a Nabatean subject in Syria pushed the woman off her mount, her clothes were pulled back from her body and he sat down to have intercourse with her; once the evidence was established, Umar had him crucified, saying "Not on this did we make a covenant with you" (Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30759). In al-Bayhaqi's longer version Awf b. Malik had already beaten the man, the woman's father and husband first objected that Awf had "disgraced" her, and Umar told the people: "Keep the covenant of Muhammad; whoever of them does this has no covenant." Suwayd adds: "He was the first crucified man I ever saw" (al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18712). These are Umar's acts, not the Prophet's. Al-Shathri grades Ibn Abi Shayba's chain weak because of Mujalid, who is also in al-Bayhaqi's chain. No grading was found for Abd al-Razzaq's chain, which runs through a narrator named only as Jabir.

Why this is a problem

The man's crime was serious, and nothing here makes light of it. The issue is the punishment and its legal basis. Umar's stated ground is not attempted rape or zina but the covenant: he treated the act as a breach of the protection treaty, which removed every protection the man had, and then crucified him. Al-Bayhaqi files the report under a heading listing what breaks a non-Muslim subject's covenant: if one of them "afflicts a Muslim woman with zina or under the name of marriage", robs a Muslim on the road, or turns a Muslim from his religion. A marriage between a non-Muslim man and a Muslim woman sits in the same list as zina and highway robbery.

The penalty follows from the man's status, not only from his act. As a protected non-Muslim he loses his protection altogether and is executed in the most public way available, with Umar's announcement that anyone of them who does such a thing "has no covenant". Al-Bayhaqi's version also records, without comment, the family's first reaction: the woman's father and husband complained that bringing the case had disgraced her.

The Muslim response

Defenders say the man committed a grave crime and broke the terms on which his safety rested, so Umar was entitled to treat him as an enemy and punish him severely; a state may punish violent crime harshly. They add that the chains are weak: al-Shathri grades Ibn Abi Shayba's version weak because of Mujalid, and Abd al-Razzaq's has no recorded grading.

Why it fails

The weakness is real for the chains through Mujalid, but Abd al-Razzaq's version reaches al-Sha'bi through a different narrator (Jabir, not Mujalid) and names Awf b. Malik as the source; al-Bayhaqi notes that Ibn Ashwa' also reported it from al-Sha'bi from Awf. Abd al-Razzaq recorded it three times, under headings including "Breaking the covenant and crucifixion". Al-Bayhaqi recorded it as precedent for a legal rule. These compilers kept it as a model of how a ruler treats a non-Muslim subject.

The "grave crime" defence does not explain the form of the law. If the issue were only violence, the ordinary penalties would apply. What the reports set out is that a non-Muslim's right to life depends on a covenant that the Muslim authority can declare void, and the heading places marrying a Muslim woman among the acts that void it.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10167, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 114
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19216, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 314
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19378, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 363
• Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30759, ed. al-Shathri, vol. 15 p. 515 (with footnote grading)
• al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18712, ed. Ata (Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya), vol. 9 p. 338
• Grading: al-Shathri, footnote to Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30759: da'if (weak): Mujalid is weak

"Umar b. al-Khattab found wine in the house of Ruwayshid al-Thaqafi, who had already been flogged for wine, so he burned his house and said: "What is his name?" He said: "Ruwayshid." He said: "Rather, Fuwaysiq.""

What the hadith says

Safiyya bint Abi Ubayd, the wife of Abd Allah b. Umar, reports through Nafi' that Umar found wine in the house of Ruwayshid al-Thaqafi, a man who had already been flogged for drinking, and burned his house. Asking his name and hearing "Ruwayshid" (a diminutive of rashid, "rightly guided"), Umar said: "Rather, Fuwaysiq" ("little sinner") (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 17035). Abd al-Razzaq repeats it through Ma'mar (17036) and through Abd al-Quddus from Nafi', where Umar says to the man's face, "Rather, you are Fuwaysiq" (17039). It is Umar's act, not the Prophet's. No grading by a named critic was found, and the al-A'zami edition prints none. The report is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The fixed penalty for drinking wine is flogging, and this man had already received it. Umar went further: he destroyed the man's home because wine was found in it, and then mocked his name. The report does not say anyone was inside, and it should not be read that way. But it shows the second caliph treating a household's property as forfeit for a moral offence, with no court and no stated limit.

The renaming matters too. The ruler turns a man's name from "rightly guided" into "little sinner". This is a picture of a moral authority whose powers over a sinner's home and reputation go beyond the penalties the law names.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was found. Jurists who cite reports like it treat them as discretionary punishment (ta'zir): a ruler may punish beyond the fixed penalties to stop public wrongdoing, and burning a place where wine is kept or sold is aimed at the trade, not the person. The report is also ungraded and found only in Abd al-Razzaq.

Why it fails

The ungraded, single-collection status is a fair point, which is why this entry is rated basic. The report shows what early Muslims were willing to attribute to Umar and record approvingly, not a proven event.

The ta'zir explanation, though, accepts the principle the report illustrates: the ruler may destroy a citizen's home for a moral offence at his discretion. That is the problem, restated as a legal category.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 17035-17036, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 9 pp. 229-230
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 17039, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 9 p. 230

"A woman used to revile the Prophet. The Prophet said: "Who will rid me of my enemy?" Khalid b. al-Walid went out to her and killed her."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Razzaq's chapter "Whoever reviles the Prophet, what is done to him" contains three reports side by side. In one, a mursal report from Ikrima, a man reviles the Prophet, who asks "Who will rid me of my enemy?"; al-Zubayr fights him, kills him and is given his spoils (9704). In the next, a woman used to revile the Prophet; he asked the same question, and Khalid b. al-Walid went out to her and killed her (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9705). In the third, Abd al-Razzaq's own father reports that when the Umayyad governor Ayyub b. Yahya came to Aden, a Christian who had reviled the Prophet was brought to him. Abd al-Rahman b. Yazid al-San'ani, who had met Umar, advised that he be killed, and he was killed. Ayyub wrote to the caliph, Abd al-Malik or his son al-Walid, who wrote back approving it (9706). No grading by a named critic was found for any of them. The chain of 9705 is visibly defective in print, with a gap the editor marks; 9706 is an Umayyad-era event, not a prophetic act.

Why this is a problem

The canonical collections already contain killings for insulting the Prophet. In Abu Dawud 4361 a blind man stabs his slave concubine (umm walad), the mother of his two sons, for reviling the Prophet, and the Prophet declares that no retaliation is due for her blood. What 9705 adds is the Prophet asking for the killing. He does not wait for a man to act on his own; he asks who will deal with his enemy, and one of his best-known commanders goes out and kills a woman. The text says nothing more about her: no war, no other crime.

9706 shows the rule working as state policy two generations later. A Christian in Yemen is executed for his words on a scholar's advice, and the caliph approves. Abd al-Razzaq, one of the main early compilers of law, grouped these reports under a legal heading about what is to be done to such a person.

The Muslim response

Classical jurists treat reviling the Prophet as a capital offence and, for a non-Muslim subject, as a breach of his covenant; the Aden case is that rule applied by a governor. Modern Muslim writers who object to vigilante killings stress that the chains of reports like 9705 are weak and that any penalty requires a court, not a private killing. No specific online response to these two reports was located.

Why it fails

The weak-chain point is fair for 9705, whose chain is broken and garbled. But the response concedes the substance: classical law does make reviling the Prophet a capital offence, and 9706 shows a governor and a caliph acting on that law with a scholar's backing. The court requirement changes little for the Christian at Aden: he was put to death by the governor on a scholar's advice, and the caliph approved.

Even setting 9705 aside, the canonical Abu Dawud 4361 has the Prophet declaring that a woman killed for insulting him died without blood-money or retaliation. Abd al-Razzaq's chapter shows how that principle was remembered: the Prophet asks for an enemy to be removed, and a woman dies for her words.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9704, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 307
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9705, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 307 (chain defective as printed)
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9706, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 307
• Sunan Abi Dawud 4361

"The Jews and Christians shall not share your cities with you unless they become Muslim; and whoever of them apostatises and refuses, nothing short of his blood is accepted from him."

What the hadith says

In a chapter titled "Expelling the Jews from Medina", Abd al-Razzaq records Tawus saying he heard Ibn Abbas say that Jews and Christians are not to share the Muslims' amsar (garrison cities) with them unless they become Muslim; and whoever of them then apostatises and refuses, "nothing short of his blood is accepted from him" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19374). Amsar are the cities the Muslims founded, not every land. "Whoever of them apostatises" means a Jew or Christian who converted and then left Islam. These are Ibn Abbas's words, not the Prophet's. No grading by a named critic was found, the al-A'zami edition prints none, and the chain includes a narrator named Layth. The report is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The canonical collections have the Prophet vowing to expel Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and "not leave any but Muslims" (Muslim 1767a). Ibn Abbas's saying extends that logic from a region to a type of city: wherever Muslims have founded a city, Jews and Christians may live in it only as converts. Their presence depends on giving up their religion.

The second clause makes the choice irreversible. A Jew or Christian who converts in order to stay, and later goes back, is not simply expelled. Nothing is accepted from him except his blood. Conversion becomes the price of residence, and the death penalty for apostasy guards the exit.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The classical reading limits it to cities Muslims themselves founded and protects non-Muslims in lands held by treaty; in another report in the same Musannaf, Ibn Abbas says Muslims must honour the treaties of such lands (10002). The saying is also a Companion's opinion with an ungraded chain, not a command of the Prophet.

Why it fails

The limitation to Muslim-founded cities is real, and the report does not say non-Muslims must leave every land. But the rule reserves the cities Muslims built for Muslims and converts. A non-Muslim may keep his faith only by living somewhere else.

The Companion-opinion point is fair, but it does not touch the apostasy clause. In Bukhari, Ibn Abbas himself quotes the Prophet: "Whoever changes his religion, kill him" (Bukhari 6922). Abd al-Razzaq placed the saying beside reports on expelling Jews and Christians from Arabia. The rule it states, convert or live elsewhere, and do not convert back, belongs to the same body of law.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19374, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 361
• Sahih Muslim 1767a
• Sahih al-Bukhari 6922

"... and that they put seals on their necks, shear the forelocks of those of them who grow their hair, make them wear belts, and forbid them to ride except crosswise on pack-saddles."

What the hadith says

Aslam, Umar's freedman, reports that Umar wrote to the commanders of his armies: they were not to levy the poll-tax (jizya) on women or children, but on every man "over whom the razor has passed"; they were to put seals on the necks of the tax-payers, shear the forelocks of those who grew their hair, make them wear belts, and forbid them to ride except crosswise on pack-saddles, "his legs on one side". The narrator adds that Umar b. Abd al-Aziz did the same to them when he became caliph (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10090; repeated at 19273 with Umar's tax rates for Syria, Egypt and Iraq). The "seal" is usually explained as a tag or seal hung on the neck as proof that the tax was paid; the text does not describe branding. Al-Bayhaqi records the neck-seal order through a different narrator, Ubayd Allah b. Umar, from Nafi' (al-Sunan al-Kubra 18718), under the heading "They are required to make their appearance different from that of Muslims", and another report says Umar "used to seal the jizya-payers on their necks" (18701). These are Umar's orders, not the Prophet's. Al-Albani calls the chain of al-Bayhaqi's neck-seal report sound, and al-Bayhaqi calls it established (thabit) (dorar.net). No grading was found for Abd al-Razzaq's fuller wording with the forelocks, belts and saddles.

Why this is a problem

These are the second caliph's written instructions to his commanders for governing conquered Christians, Jews and others, and every item marks them out as lower. A seal hangs on the neck. Forelocks are cut. A belt is required. They may ride only sideways on a pack-saddle, both legs on one side. Al-Bayhaqi files the order under a legal heading requiring non-Muslims to look different from Muslims.

The text is fair in one respect, and should be quoted fully: women and children were exempt from the tax. But the order is not about money alone. The tax-payer must carry a visible mark of his status in public. And the narrator's note that Umar b. Abd al-Aziz, often remembered as the most pious Umayyad caliph, applied the same rules shows the policy was still treated as a model decades later.

The Muslim response

Muslim writers explain the neck-seal as proof that the tax had been paid, not a mark of shame. Distinct dress, they say, served to tell communities apart in mixed cities. Some scholars also doubt the authenticity of the longer "Pact of Umar" with its many conditions, and the gradings of al-Bayhaqi's report (al-Albani: sound chain; al-Bayhaqi: established) cover only the neck-seal line, not Abd al-Razzaq's fuller list.

Why it fails

The receipt explanation could account for a seal, but not for cutting forelocks or forcing men to ride sideways. Those have no fiscal purpose; they make the subject people look and move as inferiors. Al-Bayhaqi's own heading names the purpose: to distinguish their appearance from Muslims'.

Doubts about the later "Pact of Umar" do not reach this letter, which is a separate report from Umar's own freedman. Nor do such doubts lead every Muslim authority to disown the conditions. Asked about the conditions of Umar's pact as given in Tafsir Ibn Kathir (no places of worship, distinct clothing), which the questioner had read some scholars doubt, Mufti Ebrahim Salejee replied: "How can we disagree with an illustrious person like Hadhrat Umar" (IslamQA.org).

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10090, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 85
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19273, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 pp. 331-332
• al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra, chapter heading, ed. Ata, vol. 9 p. 340
• al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18718, ed. Ata, vol. 9 p. 340
• al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18701, ed. Ata, vol. 9 p. 334
• dorar.net: al-Albani, Irwa' al-Ghalil 5/104; al-Bayhaqi, Ma'rifat al-Sunan wa'l-Athar 18572
• Grading: al-Albani, Irwa' al-Ghalil 5/104 (on al-Bayhaqi's neck-seal report): isnaduhu sahih (sound chain)
• Grading: al-Bayhaqi, Ma'rifat al-Sunan wa'l-Athar 18572 (per dorar): thabit (established)

"As for what the Muslims have founded as cities, no church shall be raised in it, nor chapel, nor fire-temple, nor cross; no horn shall be blown in it, no bell struck, and no wine or pig brought in."

What the hadith says

Asked whether non-Muslims may set up churches in the land of the Arabs, Ibn Abbas answers that in cities the Muslims have founded, no church, chapel, fire-temple or cross may be raised, no horn blown, no bell struck, and no wine or pig brought in; but in land taken by treaty, the Muslims must keep the treaty. A gloss in the report explains "what the Muslims founded" as land of the Arabs or land taken from non-Muslims by force (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10002; repeated at 19234). The chapter is titled "Demolishing their churches, and whether they may strike a bell", and in it the caliph Hisham, on a journey, consults about a newly built church at a place called Hidda and demolishes it (10000). Al-Bayhaqi has Ibn Abbas's saying in a shorter form (cities the Arabs founded) (al-Sunan al-Kubra 18716), and also a separate report, through Ibn Lahi'a from Ata from Ibn Abbas, that attributes a ban to the Prophet: "No castration in Islam, and no building of a church" (19793). These are Ibn Abbas's words. No grading was found for Abd al-Razzaq's chain, which runs through "a shaykh of Medina called Hanash Abu Ali". Al-Albani grades al-Bayhaqi's 18716 weak, and Ibn Hajar calls the chain of the prophetic version weak (dorar.net).

Why this is a problem

Ibn Abbas does more than forbid new churches. He forbids crosses, bells and horns, the public signs of non-Muslim worship, in any city Muslims founded. The gloss stretches "founded" to cover any land taken by force. Non-Muslims could live there, but their worship had to be invisible and silent.

The chapter shows the rule being applied. Its title assumes churches may be demolished, and an Umayyad caliph pulls down a new one. Al-Bayhaqi also preserves a report, with a weak chain, that attributes a ban on building churches to the Prophet himself. The tradition carried this restriction forward as law, not as one man's passing view.

The Muslim response

Muslim writers point to the protection clause in the same report: in lands taken by treaty, Muslims must keep their agreements, and the Quran itself counts churches and synagogues among places where God's name is mentioned and which God protects (Q 22:40). Al-Bayhaqi places Ibn Abbas's saying in a chapter headed "No church or chapel of theirs is to be demolished". The prophetic version is weak, and Ibn Abbas's words are an opinion, not revelation.

Why it fails

The treaty protection is real, and the entry includes it. But it protects existing places of worship under existing agreements. In every city the Muslims founded or took by force, the opinion forbids new churches, crosses and bells outright. Hisham's demolition shows that "not to be demolished" did not cover a church built after the conquest.

The weak grading of the prophetic version is fair, but it cuts the other way too. Even so, a ban on building churches circulated as a saying of the Prophet, and al-Bayhaqi transmitted it. Q 22:40 describes God defending places of worship. The legal tradition represented here set limits on which of those could be built.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10002, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 60
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19234, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 320
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10000, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 pp. 59-60
• al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18716, ed. Ata, vol. 9 p. 339
• al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 19793, ed. Ata, vol. 10 p. 41
• dorar.net: Ibn Hajar (per Fayd al-Qadir 6/380), al-Albani (Da'if al-Jami' 6171) on 'No castration in Islam, and no building of a church'
• dorar.net: al-Albani, Irwa' al-Ghalil 1266 on Ibn Abbas's 'any city the Arabs founded'
• Grading: Ibn Hajar, per al-Munawi, Fayd al-Qadir 6/380 (on al-Bayhaqi 19793): isnaduhu da'if (weak chain)
• Grading: al-Albani, Da'if al-Jami' 6171 (on al-Bayhaqi 19793; dorar also shows his Sahih al-Jami' 7166 grading 'No castration in Islam' sound, with the church clause in brackets): da'if (weak)
• Grading: al-Albani, Irwa' al-Ghalil 1266 (on al-Bayhaqi 18716): da'if (weak)

"My slave-women whom I go round to are nineteen: among them mothers of children, with their children; among them pregnant ones; and among them some who have no child."

What the hadith says

Amr b. Dinar quotes the will Ali wrote for a military campaign: "If something befalls me in this campaign: my slave-women whom I go round to are nineteen", some mothers of his children, some pregnant, some childless. Those neither pregnant nor with a child are to be freed on his death; those pregnant or with a child are kept for the child as part of the child's share, and freed if the child dies while the mother lives. It is witnessed by Hayyaj b. Abi Sufyan and Ubayd Allah b. Abi Rafi' and dated Jumada of the year 37 (AD 657) (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13213). In the report before it, Ata says he was told that Ali wrote "I have left nineteen concubines" (surriyya), and Muhammad b. Ali b. al-Husayn confirmed it was in Ali's will (13212). "Go round to" is the idiom used for a husband's rounds of his wives: these are women he had sexual relations with. This is Ali's own document, not a prophetic text. No grading by a named critic was found; Amr b. Dinar gives no chain to Ali, but Ali's great-grandson confirmed the will's content.

Why this is a problem

Ali was the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, the fourth caliph, and for Shia Muslims the first Imam. Here, in a will quoted as his, he counts nineteen enslaved women with whom he had sexual relations, in addition to his free wives. Some had borne his children, some were pregnant. The number is not an accusation by enemies; it is in his will, confirmed by a descendant.

The will's provisions show their status clearly. The childless women are freed only when he dies. The mothers are kept "for the child as part of his share", that is, counted in the child's inheritance, and freed only if the child dies first. A woman who bore his child could be held as part of that child's property.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that concubinage was lawful under the Quran, which allows men relations with "those whom their right hands possess" (Q 23:5-6), so Ali did nothing forbidden. Islam Q&A says simply that a master may be intimate with his slave woman "because Allaah has permitted it" (IslamQA 13737). Ali's will also frees the childless women and protects the mothers, which Muslims present as humane.

Why it fails

The response confirms the point rather than answering it. The problem is not that Ali broke Islamic law but that Islamic law allowed one of its most revered figures to keep nineteen women as sexual property. The legality is the issue.

The "humane" provisions take effect only after his death, and even then the mothers are kept in the estate for their own children. That is the best treatment the system offered: freedom when the owner died, and only for some.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13213, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 pp. 288-289
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13212, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 288
• IslamQA 13737 (on concubines)

"You are then one of the brothers of the devils ... The worst of you are your unmarried, and the most contemptible of your dead are your unmarried ... The devils have no weapon more effective against the righteous than women, except against the married."

What the hadith says

Abu Dharr reports that a man named Akkaf b. Bishr al-Tamimi came to the Prophet, who asked whether he had a wife. He did not. "Nor a slave-girl?" Nor a slave-girl, though he was well off. The Prophet told him he was "one of the brothers of the devils", that if he were a Christian he would be one of their monks, that "the worst of you are your unmarried, and the most contemptible of your dead are your unmarried", and that the devils have no weapon more effective against the righteous than women, except against the married. He spoke of Kursuf, who worshipped on a sea-shore for three hundred years and then disbelieved because of a woman he desired, before God accepted his repentance. "Marry, or you are one of the waverers." Akkaf asked the Prophet to marry him off, and he married him to Karima bint Kulthum al-Himyari (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10387). The chain has an unnamed man between Makhul and Abu Dharr. Al-Albani grades the core saying weak (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 2511, Da'if al-Jami' 3388), while al-Saffarini calls a chain of it good (jayyid) (dorar.net). The six canonical books do not contain it.

Why this is a problem

In this report the Prophet's question offers a wife or a slave-girl: a woman for sexual use, either by marriage or by ownership, and a man with neither is the devils' brother. The insult falls on the single man, but the theory behind it is about women. Women are the devils' best weapon against the righteous, and the only protection is marriage. The story of Kursuf makes the same point: three centuries of worship undone by desire for a woman.

The language is extreme. Unmarried men are "the worst of you", and in death "the most contemptible". The tradition kept this as a teaching on the obligation of marriage: Abd al-Razzaq places it in the chapter "The obligation of marriage and its merit".

The Muslim response

Muslims reply that the report is weak: al-Albani grades it so, the chain has an unnamed link, and Islam's teaching on marriage rests on sound and much milder hadiths that encourage marriage without condemning the unmarried. A weak report cannot establish that bachelors are the worst of people.

Why it fails

The weakness is real, and al-Albani's verdict should be respected; that is why this entry does not call it the Prophet's words. But the grading picture is not one-sided. Al-Saffarini, a Hanbali scholar, called a chain of it good, and it was recorded in a major collection under a legal heading.

What the report preserves is a view early Muslims were willing to place in the Prophet's mouth: women as Satan's weapon, a slave-girl as an acceptable substitute for a wife, and the unmarried man as contemptible. Milder sound hadiths do not undo the fact that this one was transmitted and accepted by some as good.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10387, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 pp. 171-172
• dorar.net cards: al-Albani, al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 2511 and Da'if al-Jami' 3388; al-Saffarini, Kashf al-Litham 5/248
• Grading: al-Albani, al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 2511: da'if (weak)
• Grading: al-Albani, Da'if al-Jami' 3388: da'if (weak)
• Grading: al-Saffarini, Kashf al-Litham 5/248: isnaduhu jayyid (good chain)

"They said: "Who are you?" We said: "We are servants of Allah." They said: "And we are servants of Allah." Khalid b. al-Walid took them captive, and when morning came he ordered their necks struck."

What the hadith says

Abu Qatada al-Ansari recounts a raid in the Ridda wars, the campaigns after Muhammad's death against tribes that broke with Medina. As the sun was setting, the Muslims came upon some dwellings and levelled their spears at the people, who asked who they were. "We are servants of Allah," they said; the people answered, "And we are servants of Allah." Khalid b. al-Walid took them captive and at dawn ordered their necks struck. Abu Qatada told him: "Fear Allah, Khalid, this is not lawful for you." Khalid replied: "Sit down; this is none of your business." Abu Qatada used to swear he would never again go on campaign with Khalid. The bedouins, the report adds, had urged the killing for the sake of the booty, "and that was about Malik b. Nuwayra" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18722). Abd al-Razzaq places it in the chapter "Disbelief after belief". The chain is incomplete: al-Zuhri does not say whom he heard it from. No grading by a named critic was found.

Why this is a problem

The captives answered the Muslims' challenge with the Muslims' own words: "we are servants of Allah". Khalid held them overnight and executed them in the morning. A Companion who was present told him to his face that it was unlawful, and was told to sit down. According to the report, the push for the killing came from bedouin fighters who wanted the captives' property.

Khalid faced no punishment for this. Islam Q&A, defending him, accepts the main facts: Khalid killed Malik b. Nuwayra; Umar, his son Abd Allah and Abu Qatada criticised him; and Abu Bakr paid blood-money for Malik, returned the captives and property, and kept Khalid in command (IslamQA 93204). Paying blood-money is an admission that a protected life was taken. A commander who killed men claiming to be Muslims was kept on.

The Muslim response

Islam Q&A answers that most early historians say Malik refused to pay the zakat and stopped his people from paying it, which made him a rebel. It quotes Ibn Taymiyya: it is not known that Malik's blood was protected, and at most Khalid killed him "as the result of a misjudgement", as Usama b. Zayd once killed a man who had said "There is no god but Allah" without being executed for it (IslamQA 93204).

Why it fails

The withheld-zakat explanation does not appear in this report. The captives here are not asked about zakat; they identify themselves as servants of Allah and are executed the next morning, over the objection of a Companion who said it was unlawful. The report names a motive, booty, not a doctrine.

The "misjudgement" defence concedes that the killing may have been wrong and that no one answered for it. The comparison with Usama makes the point clearer: in both cases a man who professed Islam was killed by a Muslim, and the killer was not punished for it. The defence is that the killers were not punished; it does not show the victims deserved to die.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18722, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 174
• IslamQA 93204 (on Khalid and Malik b. Nuwayra)

"He began bringing them out to him while he struck them with the whip. A woman's head-cover fell, and they said: "Commander of the Faithful, her head-cover!" He said: "Leave her; she has no sanctity.""

What the hadith says

Amr b. Dinar reports that when Khalid b. al-Walid died, women gathered to weep in the house of Maymuna, the Prophet's widow. Umar came with Ibn Abbas, carrying his whip, and told the man he addressed as Abu Abd Allah to have the Mother of the Believers screen herself and bring the women out. As they were brought out to him, Umar struck them with the whip. One woman's head-cover (khimar) fell, and when people called out, Umar said: "Leave her; she has no sanctity." Abd al-Razzaq's teacher Ma'mar used to marvel at the words "she has no sanctity" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 6681). It is Umar's act, not the Prophet's. Amr b. Dinar was not present and names no source, and no grading was found. A few reports later, in a better-attested version, Umar is told women are weeping for Khalid and says there is no harm in their shedding tears "as long as there is no naq' or laqlaqa", which the text explains as shrieking (6685). Ibn Hajar grades that version a sound saying of Umar (mawquf sahih), and Bukhari cites it without a chain (dorar.net).

Why this is a problem

In this report the caliph whips grieving women out of a house belonging to the Prophet's widow, and when a woman's head is uncovered he refuses to let her cover it: by mourning, she has lost any claim to respect. The text is about wailing women, not all women, and should not be stretched further. Even so, the phrase drew the notice of the early transmitter Ma'mar, and Abd al-Razzaq recorded it in his chapter on patience, weeping and wailing.

The report survived in a major collection with no comment rejecting it.

The Muslim response

The Muslim answer is strong here. The whipping report has no source: Amr b. Dinar was not there and names no one. The better-attested report has Umar allowing the women to weep for Khalid, forbidding only loud wailing, and Ibn Hajar grades it sound while Bukhari cites it. The weak report is contradicted by the stronger one.

Why it fails

The response is largely right, and this entry is rated basic for that reason. The sound version should be preferred, and the whipping cannot be called a proven event.

What remains is what the tradition was willing to tell about Umar. Abd al-Razzaq recorded both versions in the same chapter, and the harsh one, with its "she has no sanctity", was passed on by known transmitters and noticed by Ma'mar without being disowned.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 6681, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 pp. 556-557
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 6685, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 p. 558
• dorar.net: Bukhari mu'allaq (2/80) and Ibn Hajar on the permitting version
• Grading: Ibn Hajar, al-Futuhat al-Rabbaniyya 4/105 (on the permitting version, AR 6685): mawquf sahih (sound as Umar's own words)

"There is no harm in that. She has no sanctity; she has only stood so that we may bargain over her."

What the hadith says

In a chapter titled "A man uncovers the slave-woman when he buys her", Ibn Jurayj reports, from "one I trust", from someone who heard Ali, that Ali was asked whether a buyer may look at the shin, buttocks and belly of a slave-woman offered for sale. He said: "There is no harm in that. She has no sanctity; she has only stood so that we may bargain over her" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13208). In the next report one of the companions of Ibn Mas'ud says of a slave-woman being sold: "I do not care whether I touch her or the wall" (13209). These are not the Prophet's words. No grading by a named critic was found, and the chain to Ali has two unnamed links. The same chapter holds Ibn Umar's practice of handling slave-women before buying them, already on this site from al-Bayhaqi.

Why this is a problem

The site's al-Bayhaqi entry shows Ibn Umar handling slave-women in the market. This report adds a second leading Companion, Ali, and the reason given: the woman "has no sanctity" (la hurmata laha). Her body may be inspected, shin, buttocks and belly, because she is standing there to be priced. The next report says the same thing more bluntly: touching her is like touching a wall.

These are not stray remarks. Abd al-Razzaq collected them under a legal heading as answers to the question of what a buyer may uncover. The law of the slave market rested on the principle stated here: an enslaved woman's body did not carry the protection a free woman's did.

The Muslim response

Jurists distinguish the 'awra (the parts that must be covered) of a slave-woman from that of a free woman, and allow a buyer to see what he needs to judge what he is buying. Muslims also note that slavery was regulated, not created, by Islam, and that Islamic law allowed sexual relations only between a master and his own slave-woman (see IslamQA 13737). This report's chain to Ali has two unnamed links.

Why it fails

The weak chain is a fair point about Ali; this entry does not claim the words are certainly his. But the chapter as a whole, including Ibn Umar's practice (see the site's al-Bayhaqi entry), shows the practice was accepted. The different 'awra rule is not an answer to the objection. It is the objection, written into law: a woman's right to cover her body depended on whether she was owned.

"She has no sanctity" states the logic of that law plainly. A buyer's need to inspect the goods overrides her dignity, because she is the goods.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13208, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 287
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13209, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 287
• IslamQA 13737 (on slave women)

"He said: "Has Allah forbidden her?" She said: "No one of my family does it, nor anyone who obeys me." He said: "By Allah, I will not leave her unless you say Allah has forbidden her.""

What the hadith says

In a chapter titled "Combining blood relatives in ownership", Ibn Abi Mulayka reports that Mu'adh b. Ubayd Allah b. Ma'mar came to Aisha and said: "I have a concubine with whom I have had relations, and her daughter has come of age. May I take her daughter as a concubine?" Aisha said no. He asked: "Has Allah forbidden her?" She replied that no one of her family did it, nor anyone who obeyed her. He swore he would not give the daughter up unless Aisha said Allah had forbidden her, and she repeated only that no one of her family or followers did it. Someone asked Ibn Umar, who answered the same way (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12731). Ibn Abi Mulayka adds that he did not hear it from Aisha himself but from a man of Banu Taym. In the report just before, the Caliph Uthman, asked the same question, says: "I neither command you nor forbid you, and I would not do it myself" (12730). These are the words of Aisha, Ibn Umar and Uthman, not the Prophet's. No grading by a named critic was found.

Why this is a problem

The question is whether a man who has had sex with an enslaved woman may then take her daughter as well. Aisha disapproves. But when pressed directly, twice, whether God has forbidden it, she does not say yes. She appeals only to what her family and followers do. Uthman, as caliph, refuses either to permit or to forbid it. The Quran forbids a man his wife's daughter once he has consummated the marriage (Q 4:23), but these leading figures did not clearly apply that rule to a concubine's daughter.

The man's position is just as revealing. He wants to keep the daughter of a woman he has already used, and he says plainly he will do so unless he is shown a divine prohibition. Owning both women was the starting point, and the question was only whether God had forbidden it.

The Muslim response

Most jurists rule that a man may not have relations with both a mother and her daughter by ownership, once he has had relations with one of them, by analogy with Q 4:23. Aisha's "no" and Ibn Umar's agreement show they opposed it. Her words may also be read as a firm prohibition expressed through her household's practice. No specific online response to this report was located.

Why it fails

The later legal consensus is real, and Aisha did say no. But the report records that she would not say "Allah has forbidden it" when asked directly, twice, and that the caliph Uthman openly declined to forbid it. The ruling had to be reached by analogy because no text named the case.

Her reply should not be read as "No, Allah did not forbid it": the Arabic does not say that. What the report shows is that, in the first generation, whether a man could own mother and daughter as sexual partners was treated as a matter of family custom and personal restraint, not as a clear command from God.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12731, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 190
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12730, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 190

"Do not learn the jargon of the non-Arabs, and do not go in to them in their churches on their feast day, for the wrath comes down upon them."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 1609, in the chapter on prayer in a church, al-Thawri reports from Abu Ata' b. Dinar (so printed; the other sources name him Ata' b. Dinar) that the caliph Umar b. al-Khattab said the words above. Ratana is the unintelligible speech of foreigners, and a'ajim are non-Arabs. Al-Bayhaqi gives the same saying through Thawr b. Yazid from Ata' b. Dinar, with "the polytheists" in place of "them", under the chapter heading "The dislike of going in to the protected non-Muslims in their churches, and of imitating them on their Nayruz and Mihrajan" (al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18861), and again, with a different first clause, in Shu'ab al-Iman 8941. These are Umar's words, not the Prophet's. Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Kathir both call the chain sound (dorar); the editor of the Shu'ab calls his own chain weak, noting among other things that Ata' b. Dinar is not established to have heard from Umar, and every version passes through Ata'. The saying is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Umar is the caliph whose rulings Sunni law treats as precedent, and here he describes the festival worship of his non-Muslim neighbours as a moment when divine wrath comes down on them. The instruction is to stay away from their churches on those days, and to keep away from their speech. Al-Bayhaqi does not file this as private piety. He places it under a legal heading on the dislike of entering the churches of ahl al-dhimma, the non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, and imitating them on their Persian new-year and autumn festivals.

The picture is of a ruling religion that regards its subjects' worship as a scene of God's anger and builds social distance from them into law. The later scholars who relied on the saying were not marginal figures. Ibn Taymiyya cites it in Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim, a work devoted to Muslims keeping themselves distinct from non-Muslims.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The usual answer is that these are Umar's words, not a saying of the Prophet, and that ratana means foreign gibberish rather than a foreign language as such. Jurists read the first clause as dislike of making foreign speech a habit, not a ban on learning languages, which many Muslims did. The second clause, on this view, protects Muslim identity by keeping believers from joining another religion's rites on its festival. It does not tell Muslims to harm anyone. The Shu'ab editor also judges the chain weak, noting that Ata' b. Dinar's hearing from Umar is not established.

Why it fails

On the language clause the response is fair, and this entry does not claim that Umar banned learning languages. The rest of the saying is untouched by it. The reason given for staying out of the churches is not that Muslims might join in the rites but that "the wrath comes down upon them": the worshippers themselves are the object of divine anger.

On the chain, the editor's doubt is a real one and is reported here. Against it stand Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Kathir, who both judged the chain sound and used the saying. At the least, the saying was accepted and applied by major later authorities, and al-Bayhaqi placed it under a legal chapter heading on entering the churches of non-Muslim subjects.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 1609, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 1 p. 411
• al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18861, Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya ed., vol. 9 p. 392
• al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 8941, al-Rushd ed., vol. 12 p. 19 (with the editor's grading)
• dorar.net: gradings of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Kathir
• Grading: Ibn Taymiyya, Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim 1/511 (via dorar): isnaduhu sahih (its chain is sound)
• Grading: Ibn Kathir, Musnad al-Faruq 2/494 (via dorar): isnaduhu sahih (its chain is sound)
• Grading: Editor of Shu'ab al-Iman (al-Rushd ed.), on 8941: isnaduhu da'if (weak chain); Ata' b. Dinar's hearing from Umar is not established

"They say it is of the stones of Paradise, but it is only a stone from one of these valleys. (I think he said:) Allah wanted to make it a marker."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Razzaq heads a chapter "The Corner is from Paradise". It opens with Ibn Abbas: "The Corner is of the stones of Paradise" (8917). It continues with Ibn Abbas again: "The Corner, meaning the Stone, is the right hand of Allah on earth, with which He shakes hands with His creation as a man shakes hands with his brother" (8919). Between the two stands Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8918, in which Ibn Uyayna reports through Salim b. Abi Hafsa and Mundhir al-Thawri that Muhammad b. Ali said the words above. Muhammad b. Ali is a Successor of Ali's family, not a Companion, and "I think he said" is a narrator's hesitation. No grading of 8918 was found. Critics on dorar reject the wording that puts "the right hand of Allah" in the Prophet's mouth: Ibn al-Arabi calls it batil and al-Dhahabi names a liar in one chain (dorar). Those verdicts concern the Prophet-attributed version, not Ibn Abbas's words in 8919. On those words, dorar shows Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut noting that Abd al-Razzaq's chain has Ibrahim b. Yazid al-Khuzi, who is matruk (abandoned), followed only by Ibn Jurayj using 'an, while al-Busiri calls the Ibn Abbas saying mawquf on a sound chain (dorar).

Why this is a problem

The heavenly origin of the Black Stone is not fringe lore. Tirmidhi 877 has Ibn Abbas report the Prophet saying that the Black Stone came down from Paradise whiter than milk and was blackened by the sins of the children of Adam, and al-Tirmidhi calls it hasan sahih. Yet in the chapter Abd al-Razzaq built to make the same point, a Successor from the Prophet's own clan is quoted saying the opposite, and saying it as a correction of what "they say": the Stone is an ordinary rock from the valleys around Mecca, which Allah chose as a marker.

Either the Prophet said the Stone came from Paradise and a learned member of his family flatly denied it, or the claim grew in the generations after him and was later given a prophetic chain. Either way the early tradition was not agreed on whether the object pilgrims kiss came from heaven, and the compiler recorded both answers side by side without reconciling them.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The standard answer would be that 8918 is one Successor's opinion, ungraded, and cannot stand against a report that al-Tirmidhi grades hasan sahih from the Prophet. The Successor also keeps the ritual: Allah chose the Stone as a marker. Muslim practice rests not on the Stone's origin but on following the Prophet, as Umar said when he kissed it: he knew it was a stone that could neither harm nor benefit, and kissed it only because he had seen the Prophet do so (Bukhari 1597).

Why it fails

Ranking the reports does not remove the disagreement; it shows it was there. A man of the Prophet's clan, quoted by a major early compiler, rejects as hearsay ("they say") what the canonical report presents as the Prophet's own teaching. Abd al-Razzaq kept his rejection in the chapter, between two sayings of Ibn Abbas that go further than Tirmidhi does.

Umar's words in Bukhari also cut both ways. If the Stone is a stone that neither harms nor benefits, kissed only because the Prophet kissed it, the case for its heavenly origin and for its being "the right hand of Allah" rests on reports that Umar and this Successor did not repeat. This is a disagreement inside the tradition, not proof either way, which is why the entry is rated moderate.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8918, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 38
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8917, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 38
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8919, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 pp. 38-39
• dorar.net: gradings of the Prophet-attributed 'right hand of Allah' wording
• Jami' al-Tirmidhi 877
• Sahih al-Bukhari 1597
• Grading: Ibn al-Arabi, Aridat al-Ahwadhi 2/305 (via dorar), on the Prophet-attributed 'right hand' wording, not 8919: batil (false)
• Grading: al-Dhahabi, Talkhis al-Ilal al-Mutanahiya 191 (via dorar), on the Jabir version of that wording: its chain contains Ishaq b. Bishr al-Kahili, a liar
• Grading: Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut, Takhrij al-Awasim wa-l-Qawasim 4/141 (on Ibn Abbas's words, 8919): its chain has Ibrahim b. Yazid al-Khuzi, who is matruk (abandoned); Ibn Jurayj follows him with 'an
• Grading: al-Busiri, Ithaf al-Khira al-Mahara 3/190 (on Ibn Abbas's words): mawquf bi-isnad sahih (Ibn Abbas's own words, on a sound chain)

"When Allah sent Adam down, his feet were on the earth and his head in the sky, hearing the speech of the people of heaven and their prayers ... the angels were in awe of him until they complained to Allah ... so Allah lowered him to the earth."

What the hadith says

In the chapter on building the Ka'ba, the Meccan Successor Ata' b. Abi Rabah says that when Adam was sent down, his feet were on the earth and his head in the sky. He heard the speech and prayers of the people of heaven and grew at ease with them, but the angels were in awe of him and complained to Allah, so Allah lowered him to the earth. Missing their voices, Adam grew lonely and was sent towards Mecca: where his foot fell became a village and each stride a desert, and a ruby of Paradise was sent down on the site of the House (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9090). Qatada tells it with Adam landing in India: "his head was in the sky and his feet on the earth, and the angels were in awe of him, so he was reduced to sixty cubits" (9096). These are two Successors' words, not the Prophet's, and no grading of either was found. A related version from Abd Allah b. Amr in al-Tabarani is judged by al-Haythami to contain an abandoned narrator (dorar). Only the sixty cubits are canonical: Bukhari 3326 has the Prophet say Adam was created sixty cubits tall and that "creation has kept decreasing" since.

Why this is a problem

The story pictures the sky as a ceiling close enough for a standing man to put his head into, where he can overhear the angels at prayer, and the earth as a surface on which one giant's stride leaves a desert. Allah's remedy for the angels' unease is to press Adam down to size. This is the cosmology of the period, told as the founding history of the Ka'ba by two of the leading scholars of the generation after the Companions.

The canonical layer keeps the core of it. Bukhari's report of a first man sixty cubits tall (roughly thirty metres), with humanity shrinking ever since, is the same picture in a milder form, and it is put in the Prophet's mouth in Islam's most trusted collection.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The obvious answer is that Ata' and Qatada are Successors repeating lore, much of it from Jewish and Christian sources, and no Muslim is bound by it. The details that make the story strange (the head in the sky, the frightened angels, the lowering) are not in any prophetic report. Bukhari's sixty cubits is a statement about the unseen first creation, which believers accept on the Prophet's authority.

Why it fails

For the head-in-the-sky details the response is right, and the entry is rated basic for that reason. They show what respected early teachers told about the sanctuary's origins, and what Abd al-Razzaq thought worth recording, not a doctrine Muslims must believe.

The sixty cubits cannot be set aside so easily. Bukhari 3326 does not only describe Adam at creation; it adds that creation has kept decreasing until now. That is a claim about human history, and the human remains we have from the distant past do not show people shrinking from giants to their present size.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9090, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 91
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9096, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 pp. 93-94
• dorar.net: al-Haythami on the Abd Allah b. Amr version
• Sahih al-Bukhari 3326
• Grading: al-Haythami, Majma' al-Zawa'id 3/291 (via dorar), on the Abd Allah b. Amr parallel in al-Tabarani: fihi al-Nahhas b. Qahm wa-huwa matruk (it contains al-Nahhas b. Qahm, an abandoned narrator)

"Allah created the place of this House two thousand years before He created anything of the earth, and its foundations are in the seventh earth."

What the hadith says

In the chapter on building the Ka'ba, Hisham b. Hassan reports through Humayd al-A'raj that the Successor Mujahid said the words above (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9097). The next report, from Ibn Uyayna, gives a saying of Ka'b al-Ahbar, a convert from Judaism known for transmitting Israelite lore: "The House was foam on the water forty years before He created the earth, and from it the earth was spread out" (9098). Ibn Uyayna says "Ka'b told me", but he was born long after Ka'b died, so either a link is missing or the name stands for someone else. Neither saying is attributed to the Prophet, and no grading was found for either. Neither is in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Two authorities in the same chapter make the same kind of claim and give very different figures: the site of the Ka'ba existed two thousand years before the earth, or it floated as foam on the water forty years before the earth. Mujahid adds that its foundations reach the seventh earth, assuming a cosmos of stacked earths. Ka'b says the earth itself was spread out from the House, using the same verb the Qur'an uses for the spreading of the earth (Q79:30, dahaha).

These are not stray remarks. Abd al-Razzaq places them in the sanctuary's founding history, alongside Adam's descent and Abraham's building. They show how sacred geography grew in the first Islamic centuries: speculative, contradictory, and centred on the shrine.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The answer would be that neither saying comes from the Prophet. Mujahid's is an unsupported opinion, and Ka'b's belongs to the Israelite material that Muslim scholars treat with caution. That the figures conflict shows only that these men were guessing, which is why Muslims are not bound by either.

Why it fails

The response is largely right, and the entry is rated basic. The point is not that Islam requires belief in a pre-existent Ka'ba but that a leading Successor and a widely quoted early source taught it as history, and a major compiler preserved both versions without comment.

It also shows how freely the earliest teachers filled the gaps in the Qur'an's account of creation with cosmic claims about Mecca, and how little they agreed on the details.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9097, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 94
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9098, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 pp. 94-95

"If they are polytheists of the Arabs, nothing is accepted from them but Islam, and if they refuse they are killed."

What the hadith says

In Abd al-Razzaq's chapter "Killing polytheists in cold blood and ransoming captives", Layth tells the Successor Mujahid he has heard that Ibn Abbas held captives may not be killed, because Q47:4 says "either grace afterwards or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens". Mujahid answers: "Pay no heed to this at all. I met the Companions of Muhammad, and every one of them rejected it and said: this is abrogated. It applied only in the period [of truce] between the Prophet of Allah and the polytheists. As for today, by the word of Allah 'kill the polytheists wherever you find them' (Q9:5): if they are polytheists of the Arabs, nothing is accepted from them but Islam, and if they refuse they are killed." Other captives the Muslims may kill, spare or ransom as they choose, so long as they keep their religion; if they profess Islam they are not ransomed (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9404). Through a second chain al-Thawri reports Mujahid and al-Dahhak saying that Q47:4 was abrogated by "kill the polytheists", adding that al-Suddi said the same (9405). These are Successors' words, reporting the Companions' view; the chain of 9404 runs through Abbad b. Kathir, and no critic's verdict on it was found.

Why this is a problem

Q47:4 is often offered as the Qur'an's humane rule for prisoners of war: release them as a favour or for ransom. In this chapter that rule is said to be cancelled. Mujahid claims the Companions he met were unanimous that the verse was abrogated by the sword verse of Sura 9, and he spells out what replaced it. For Arab polytheists there is no ransom and no release: they convert or they die. For everyone else, killing the captive is one of the options, and a captive who becomes Muslim loses the chance of being ransomed.

The claim is not a lone voice. Mujahid's abrogation claim appears again through a second chain (al-Thawri from the same Layth), al-Dahhak and al-Suddi agree, and an earlier report in the same chapter ends with the comment that Q47:4 was abrogated by "seize them and kill them wherever you find them" (Q4:89), a verse that "came down, they claim, about the Arabs specifically" (9389). The "no compulsion in religion" of Q2:256 has, on this account, no force for the Arab polytheist: Islam is the only thing accepted from him.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. Muslims can point out that the same report records Ibn Abbas, the leading exegete among the Companions, holding that Q47:4 stands and captives may not be killed. Claims that a verse is abrogated are a Successor's opinion, not revelation, and Mujahid's report of a Companion consensus is unverified and ungraded. The ruling on Arab polytheists, on this view, belonged to a specific war against Arabian idolaters who had fought the Muslims, and does not override Q2:256 as a general principle.

Why it fails

Ibn Abbas's reported opinion is real, and the entry gives it. But in this report he is the voice being overruled: Mujahid dismisses him by appeal to all the Companions he met, and al-Dahhak and al-Suddi are quoted on Mujahid's side in the next report. The tradition did not record a single view: the same chapter also has Ata' disliking the killing of polytheists in cold blood and reciting Q47:4 (9389), but the view that the merciful verse was cancelled had prominent early backers.

The "specific war" reading also concedes the substance. Mujahid does not limit the rule to past enemies. He says "as for today", and draws a permanent legal distinction between Arab polytheists, for whom the only options are Islam or death, and other captives, for whom killing remains an option. That is the law of captives as these teachers taught it, and it gives Arab polytheists no freedom of religion.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9404, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 pp. 210-211
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9405, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 211
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9389, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 204

"Kill him: the killing of one man of the polytheists is dearer to me than such-and-such."

What the hadith says

In the chapter "Killing polytheists in cold blood and ransoming captives", Ma'mar reports that Abd al-Karim al-Jazari heard that Abu Bakr, as caliph, was written to about a captured enemy commander for whom such-and-such an amount was being offered, and replied with the words above (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9391). The sum is left vague in the text (kadha wa-kadha). It is Abu Bakr's order, not the Prophet's, and it comes as hearsay: Abd al-Karim says only that it "reached him", so the chain is broken. No grading by a named critic was found, and the report is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Q47:4 gives the Muslims two ways to end a captive's captivity: release as a favour, or ransom. The first caliph, offered a ransom for a captured commander, chooses neither. He orders the man killed and gives his reason in terms of preference, not necessity: the death of one polytheist is worth more to him than the money.

Abd al-Razzaq places the report in a chapter that opens the question of whether captives may be killed in cold blood at all, a few reports after the comment that the merciful verse was abrogated. Read in that setting, it is offered as precedent: the caliph who succeeded the Prophet put the killing of an unbeliever above the ransom the Qur'an allows.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The obvious answer is that the report is unsourced hearsay: Abd al-Karim al-Jazari did not meet Abu Bakr and does not say who told him. Even if true, the captive was an enemy commander in wartime, and Islamic law has long allowed the ruler to choose, case by case, whether a dangerous enemy leader is released, ransomed or executed.

Why it fails

The objection to the chain is fair, and the entry is rated basic for that reason. It cannot show what Abu Bakr did. It shows what Ma'mar and Abd al-Razzaq passed on about the first caliph, and Abd al-Razzaq filed it in his chapter on killing and ransoming captives.

The second answer concedes the substance. A rule that lets the ruler execute a prisoner of war at his discretion, even when a ransom is on offer, is exactly what the report illustrates, and the reason Abu Bakr gives is not the man's danger but that killing a polytheist is dearer to him.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9391, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 205

"He ordered them to kill them all if they could overpower them ... and the Messenger of Allah began to rejoice and smile at what he was telling him."

What the hadith says

In the chapter "Killing with fire", Abu al-Zinad reports from the Successor Amir al-Sha'bi that the Prophet sent a force against some people and ordered them to kill them all if they could overpower them. The bearer of good news came and told him they had fallen on them at dawn and were killing them, "and the Messenger of Allah began to rejoice and smile at what he was telling him." The man went on: someone ran and climbed a tall, thick tree; "we shot him with arrows while he was in it, then we lit a fire and burned the tree." The Prophet grew angry when the burning was mentioned. The man said that when the climber fell, it turned out the arrows had already killed him (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9419). The report is mursal: al-Sha'bi did not witness the Prophet, and the participant who speaks is unnamed. No grading was found. The people attacked are not named, and the text says nothing about who among them was killed.

Why this is a problem

The report has two reactions, and the compiler's interest is in the second. The order to kill a whole group, and the news that it was being carried out at dawn, draw from the Prophet gladness and smiles. Only the burning of a tree with a man in it, who turned out to be dead already, draws his anger. The moral line runs between methods of killing, not around the killing itself.

The canonical tradition has the same structure. In Bukhari 3016 the Prophet orders two men, called only "so-and-so and so-and-so", to be burned, then withdraws the order because "none punishes with fire but Allah", and says instead: "if you find them, kill them." The prohibition reserves fire as Allah's punishment; it does not question the killing.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The answer is that the chain is weak: al-Sha'bi was born after the event and does not name his source, and the speaker of the second half is unknown. The people attacked are unidentified and may have been combatants who had attacked Muslims. The point Abd al-Razzaq draws from it, by placing it in the chapter on fire, is the Prophet's anger at burning, which shows his restraint.

Why it fails

The weak chain is a fair point, and the entry is rated moderate rather than strong. It cannot establish what the Prophet did. It does show what a leading Successor reported and what Ibn Jurayj and Abd al-Razzaq transmitted without comment: a Prophet who smiles at news of a slaughter ordered to be total.

The "restraint" reading is the problem. The only restraint recorded is about fire, and Bukhari 3016 shows that in the canonical sources too the prohibition of burning sits alongside the order to kill. Nothing in this report suggests the order to "kill them all" troubled anyone.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9419, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 215
• Sahih al-Bukhari 3016

"'Will you leave this man who punishes with the punishment of Allah?' Abu Bakr said: 'I will not sheathe a sword that Allah has drawn against the polytheists.'"

What the hadith says

In the chapter "Killing with fire", Ma'mar reports from Hisham b. Urwa that his father Urwa b. al-Zubayr said: Khalid b. al-Walid burned people of the Ridda, the tribes that left Islam after the Prophet's death. Umar said to Abu Bakr the words above, and Abu Bakr gave the reply (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9412). Abd al-Razzaq's text says only that Khalid burned them. A fuller form of Urwa's report, concerning apostates of Banu Sulaym, is on dorar, where Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut judges: "its men are reliable, but it is mursal". Urwa was not present, so the link to the event is missing. The report is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Umar's objection uses the language of a prophetic ban. In Bukhari 6922, when Ali burned a group of heretics, Ibn Abbas said he would not have burned them because the Prophet forbade it (the ban's wording, "Do not punish with Allah's punishment", is in the parallel Bukhari 3017). Umar raises exactly that objection, and Abu Bakr answers by refusing to sheathe Khalid, the man the Prophet himself called "one of Allah's swords" (Bukhari 3757).

On this report, the first caliph was told that his general was punishing apostates with "the punishment of Allah", the language of the Prophet's ban, and kept him in command. Taken with Bukhari 6922, it means two of the four rightly guided caliphs are linked to burning people for leaving Islam, one by keeping the general who did it and one by doing it himself.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The standard answer would be that the report is mursal, as al-Arna'ut notes, so it cannot prove what happened. Abu Bakr's answer is a refusal to dismiss a commander in a war that threatened the state, not approval of burning. Abu Bakr himself, in a separate report, regretted having burned al-Fuja'a, which shows he did not regard burning as acceptable.

Why it fails

The chain point is fair, but al-Arna'ut also says the men in the chain are reliable: the defect is a missing link at the start, not a suspect transmitter. Urwa, the son of al-Zubayr and a leading historian of the early campaigns, is the kind of source the tradition relies on for the Ridda wars.

The "refusal to dismiss" reading is the problem, not the answer. Umar did not ask Abu Bakr to praise the burning; he asked him to stop it, and Abu Bakr chose the general over the prohibition. If he knew burning was wrong, as his regret over al-Fuja'a suggests, he knowingly left it unpunished when the victims were apostates.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9412, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 212
• dorar.net: Urwa's report (Banu Sulaym form) with al-Arna'ut's verdict
• Sahih al-Bukhari 6922
• Sahih al-Bukhari 3757
• Sahih al-Bukhari 3017
• Grading: Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut, Takhrij Siyar A'lam al-Nubala' 1/372 (via dorar), on Urwa's report in its fuller form: rijaluhu thiqat lakinnahu mursal (its men are reliable, but it is mursal)

"He was the first to make it a practice. The head of Ziyad and his companions was carried to him, and they cooked their heads in the pots."

What the hadith says

In the chapter on raiding parties and carrying heads, the Successor al-Zuhri says that no head was ever brought to the Prophet, not even on the day of Badr. A great head (ra's 'azim) was brought to Abu Bakr, and he said: "What have I to do with their carrion being carried to the city of the Messenger of Allah?" After him heads were not carried, even during the civil strife, to Marwan or anyone else, "until the time of Ibn al-Zubayr: he was the first to make it a practice. The head of Ziyad and his companions was carried to him, and they cooked their heads in the pots" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9703). A shorter version through Ma'mar has Abu Bakr refuse "carrion" in the Prophet's city and says the first to have a head brought to him was Ibn al-Zubayr (9702); in another, Abu Bakr is brought a head and says, "You have transgressed" (9701). This is al-Zuhri's historical note. It does not say who Ziyad was or who did the cooking. No grading was found, and the report is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Al-Zuhri presents the practice as an innovation, and he is right to condemn it. But the history he gives is a history of Muslims. Someone brought a severed head to the first caliph; Abu Bakr had to refuse it. Within two generations the practice was established by Ibn al-Zubayr, who claimed the caliphate in Mecca, and the heads of Ziyad and his companions, carried to him, were cooked in pots.

The episode shows how quickly a leader of the early community, by al-Zuhri's account, made the carrying of severed heads a practice, and how far it went: the heads were cooked in pots.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The obvious answer is that the report itself condemns the practice: it stresses that the Prophet never received a head, and that Abu Bakr rejected one as carrion. What political rivals did in a later civil war is not Islam and cannot be charged to its founder.

Why it fails

The response is largely right, and the entry is rated basic. The report clears the Prophet and Abu Bakr; it is not evidence against either.

What remains is what the report says about the first Muslim century: that someone brought a severed head to the first caliph at all, and that within a few decades a claimant to the caliphate made the carrying of heads a practice, with heads cooked in pots. That is part of the record of the early community that apologetic accounts usually leave out.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9703, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 306
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9702, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 306
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9701, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 306

"He flogged the Christian eighty for the Muslim, and said to the Christian: 'What is in you is greater than this man's slander of you,' and let him go."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Razzaq's chapter heading is "No hadd on whoever slanders them", meaning Jews and Christians. In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10016, two men told al-Thawri they were with the judge al-Sha'bi when a Muslim and a Christian were brought before him, each having accused the other of fornication. He gave the Christian eighty lashes for the Muslim, told the Christian that what was in him was greater than the slander, and let the Muslim go. The governor wrote to the caliph Umar b. Abd al-Aziz, who wrote back approving what al-Sha'bi had done. Al-Thawri adds: "Whoever slanders a Christian has no hadd." The chapter opens with al-Zuhri: "No hadd on whoever accuses a Jew or a Christian" (10012), and Urwa and Nafi' say the same (10013-10014). The same case appears twice more in the book (12518, 19248). These are rulings of Successors and a caliph, not the Prophet's. No grading was found, and none is in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Q24:4 sets eighty lashes for anyone who accuses a chaste person of fornication without four witnesses. In this case the same accusation passes in both directions in one courtroom and gets two results. The Christian receives the full Qur'anic penalty. The Muslim goes free, and the judge explains why to the Christian's face: what is in him (understood as his unbelief) is worse than being called a fornicator.

This is not a lone judge's eccentricity. A caliph praised it, and al-Zuhri, Urwa, Nafi' and al-Thawri all state the rule. Under it a Muslim may publicly accuse a Jewish or Christian woman of fornication and face no fixed penalty, while her community has no such freedom against him. The honour of non-Muslim subjects is not protected by the fixed penalty that protects Muslims.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The jurists' explanation is that the slander penalty protects a muhsan, a person of established chastity, and that being Muslim is one of the conditions of that status. The ruling therefore applies an existing definition rather than inventing a bias. Nor is a Muslim slanderer left wholly free: the same chapter records that the ruler may punish him at his discretion (10015).

Why it fails

The definition is the problem, not the answer to it. Making Islam a condition of protected honour is precisely what creates two classes of person before the law.

The discretionary punishment does not close the gap either. The Christian received a fixed penalty of eighty lashes that no judge could reduce; the Muslim, at most, faced whatever the ruler chose, and in this case the judge chose nothing and the caliph approved. That is the unequal justice the report records.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10016, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 64
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10012, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 64
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10013-10014, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 64
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10015, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 64
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12518, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 131
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19248, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 324

"He would not eat the slaughter of a Zanji ... my father used to say: 'And have I ever seen any good in a Zanji?'"

What the hadith says

Abd al-Razzaq's chapter heading is "The slaughter of the uncircumcised, the captive, the mute and the Zanji". In it Ma'mar reports that the Successor Tawus b. Kaysan would not eat an animal slaughtered by a Zanji. Ma'mar asked Tawus's son why, and he answered: "My father used to say: 'And have I ever seen any good in a Zanji?'" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8565). The Zanj were the black peoples of the East African coast. The text does not say whether the Zanji in question was Muslim. This is a Successor's personal practice and remark, not a saying of the Prophet. No grading was found, and the report is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The reason Tawus gives for refusing the meat is not the slaughterer's religion or the method of slaughter, which is what the law of slaughter asks about. It is his race. A leading jurist of the generation after the Companions dismisses a whole people with a single sentence, and his son passes the remark on as the explanation of his father's practice.

The compiler treats the question as a legal one. His chapter heading sets the Zanji beside the uncircumcised man, the captive and the mute, as a category whose slaughter needs a ruling. Ma'mar and Abd al-Razzaq transmitted the remark without objection. The scholars who shaped Islamic law did not all share modern ideas of racial equality, and this report preserves one of them saying so plainly.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The obvious answer is that this is one Successor's personal prejudice, not Islamic law. The Prophet's own teaching, Muslims point out, rejects any superiority of race, and black Companions such as Bilal were honoured in the community. Tawus's dislike binds no one, and the law of slaughter turns on the slaughterer's religion, not his colour.

Why it fails

The response is right that this is not law, and the entry does not claim it is. But the defence of the tradition usually rests on its scholars, and Tawus is one of them. His remark was not suppressed or answered in the chapter; it was recorded as the reason for a practice, under a heading that already made "the Zanji" a legal category.

It is evidence that racial contempt for black Africans was voiced by one of the most respected early Muslim scholars and handed down by others without comment. That sits uneasily with the claim that Islam swept such attitudes away from the start.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8565, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 4 pp. 484-485

"His testimony is not permitted, and his prayer is not accepted."

What the hadith says

In the chapter "The slaughter of the uncircumcised, the captive, the mute and the Zanji", Ma'mar reports from Qatada that Ibn Abbas disliked meat slaughtered by an uncircumcised man (aghral) and said the words above. Ma'mar then asked Hammad, who disagreed: "There is no harm in his slaughter; his testimony is allowed and his prayer accepted" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8562). Ma'mar adds that al-Hasan allowed a man who became Muslim when older, and feared harm to himself from circumcision, not to be circumcised, and saw no harm in his slaughter (same report). Ibn Abbas's view is a Companion's opinion, not the Prophet's. Qatada does not say how he heard it, and no grading was found. It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Ibn Abbas, the Companion most often called the interpreter of the Qur'an, makes whether a Muslim man's prayer is accepted, and whether his evidence is admissible in court, depend on whether he has been circumcised. The Qur'an never mentions circumcision. On this view an adult convert who remained uncircumcised would be a Muslim whose prayers are not accepted and whose word counts for nothing as a witness.

The report also shows the range of early opinion: within one entry the ruling moves from Ibn Abbas's total exclusion to Hammad's full acceptance, with al-Hasan's concession in between. Rules presented today as settled were, in the first century, matters of personal judgment.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The answer is in the report itself: Hammad rejects the view, and al-Hasan excuses an older convert who fears harm. The chain from Qatada to Ibn Abbas is unexamined, and no school of law made a man's prayer depend on his circumcision.

Why it fails

The response is largely right, and the entry is rated basic. It does not show what Islam requires. It shows that a senior Companion was credited with a severe view that would have denied uncircumcised converts accepted prayer and the right to testify, and that the tradition preserved it under his name.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8562, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 4 p. 483
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8562 (Ma'mar on al-Hasan), ed. al-A'zami, vol. 4 p. 483

"Bring out the girl who has not yet reached puberty; perhaps her paternal cousins will desire her."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Razzaq's chapter "Displaying girls, and looking at the time of marriage" opens with Ibn Jurayj saying: "I was told that Umar b. al-Khattab said" the words above (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10334). Abrizu means let her be seen in public, not uncover her, and to "desire" her (raghiba fi) here means to want to marry her. The next report is the Prophet telling al-Mughira b. Shu'ba to go and look at a woman he meant to propose to (10335). These are Umar's words, not the Prophet's, and the chain is broken: Ibn Jurayj does not say who told him. No grading was found, and the saying is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The second caliph advises families to put a girl who has not reached puberty where her male cousins can see her, so that they will want to marry her. The girl's childhood is not treated as a reason to wait.

The compiler treats this as marriage law. He sets Umar's advice at the head of a chapter on viewing prospective brides, directly before the Prophet's instruction to look at a woman before proposing. The pre-pubescent girl and the adult woman are filed as cases of the same thing: a marriage prospect to be looked at.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The answer would be that the report is hearsay with an unnamed source, so Umar may never have said it. Even if he did, "bring out" means only not keeping the girl hidden, so that relatives can see her, and nothing sexual is described. A marriage contract arranged for a child, on the classical view, does not mean consummation before she is ready.

Why it fails

The broken chain is a fair point, which is why the entry is rated moderate. What it shows is what Abd al-Razzaq thought worth placing first in his chapter on viewing brides: advice, credited to Umar, to make a pre-pubescent girl visible as a bride.

The second answer concedes the substance. Nobody claims the report describes a sexual act; the problem is that it treats a girl below puberty as a candidate for marriage whom suitors should be encouraged to want. That a contract could be made then and consummation delayed is the classical position, and it is the position this report reflects.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10334, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 156
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10335, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 pp. 156-157

"My father married off his son when small - this one aged five, this one aged six - and he died, and she inherited from him four thousand dinars or thereabouts."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Razzaq's chapter "Marriage of two minors" includes al-Hasan, al-Zuhri and Qatada: "If fathers marry off the young, their marriage is valid." Abd al-Razzaq adds: "And that is what we follow" (10355). Al-Zuhri then reports that the Successor Urwa b. al-Zubayr married his young son to a young daughter of Mus'ab (10358), and Urwa's son Hisham gives the details quoted above (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10359). The text does not make clear which child was five and which six. In the same chapter Tawus holds that when a father marries off two minors, "they have the choice when they grow up" (10357). These are the practice and opinions of Successors and of the compiler, not the Prophet's words. No grading was found, and the reports are not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The law described here allows a father to bind a child of five or six into marriage, and treats the marriage as real. When the little boy died, the little girl inherited about four thousand dinars from him as his widow. Three of the most important scholars of the second generation declare such marriages valid, and the compiler, one of the founders of hadith literature, says this is the rule he follows.

Neither child chose anything. The contract was made between the fathers' families, and the law recognised it with the full effects of marriage. Urwa was no marginal figure: he is a central transmitter of the reports about the Prophet's own marriage to A'isha, which the canonical collections also place in her childhood.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The standard answer is that no consummation is involved or implied. A contract between small children was a family and property arrangement, made by fathers presumed to act in their children's interest, and consummation would wait until both were ready. Classical law gave fathers this authority because families arranged marriages in that society.

Why it fails

The response confirms the problem rather than answering it. The objection is not that these children had sex but that the law let a father make a five- or six-year-old a spouse, with no say, in a contract that carried inheritance, and treated that as valid. The inheritance in this case shows it was a marriage in law, not a promise.

"That society" is also the issue. The rule did not stay a custom: the leading jurists stated it as law, and the compiler adopted it. Classical Islamic law kept a father's power to marry off minors, which is why it remains a live question in Muslim countries today.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10359, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 pp. 164-165
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10358, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 164
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10355, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 164
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10357 (Tawus: children married off may choose when grown), ed. al-A'zami

"Maymuna, do you have Ha Mim Ain Sin Qaf? ... Then recite it to me, for I have been made to forget what is between its beginning and its end."

What the hadith says

In the chapter "Keeping up the Qur'an and forgetting it", Ibn Jurayj reports from Ja'far b. Muhammad (al-Sadiq) that the Prophet one night recited "Ha Mim, Ain Sin Qaf", the opening of Sura 42 (al-Shura), repeating it over and over in the house of his wife Maymuna. He asked her: "Maymuna, do you have Ha Mim Ain Sin Qaf?" She said yes. He said: "Then recite it to me, for I have been made to forget what is between its beginning and its end" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 5976). The chain is badly broken: Ja'far b. Muhammad (d. AD 765) never met the Prophet and names no source. No grading was found. That the Prophet forgot some verses is canonical: in Bukhari 5038 he hears a man reciting at night and says the man reminded him of verses "which I had been made to forget".

Why this is a problem

Q87:6-7 promises the Prophet: "We will make you recite, and you will not forget, except what Allah wills." Bukhari already records that he forgot verses and was reminded of them when he heard someone else recite. This report goes further. The Prophet keeps the beginning and the end of a whole sura but has lost everything in between, and has to ask his wife to recite it back to him.

If the man who received the Qur'an could lose the body of a sura and depend on a listener's memory to recover it, the text's preservation rested on the community's memory, not on his. The claim that the Qur'an was perfectly preserved through the Prophet's own unfailing recall is not what these reports describe.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The answer is that the chain is worthless: Ja'far lived more than a century after the Prophet and does not say where he got the story. The sound report in Bukhari speaks only of some verses, and Q87:7 itself allows for forgetting "what Allah wills". The Qur'an was preserved by many Companions who memorised it, which is exactly why a forgotten passage could be recovered.

Why it fails

On this report the response is right that it proves nothing about the Prophet, and the entry is rated moderate only because the canonical layer shares its premise. What it shows is that a major early compiler, in a chapter about forgetting the Qur'an, recorded a story of the Prophet losing most of a sura.

The canonical answer concedes the main point. If preservation depended on the Companions' memories, then the Prophet's own memory was not its guarantee, and Bukhari 5038 records at least one recovery that came through hearing another man recite.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 5976, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 p. 361
• Sahih al-Bukhari 5038

"He taught a man 'the tree of Zaqqum is the food of the sinner (al-athim)'. The man said: 'the food of the orphan (al-yatim)'. Abu al-Darda' said: 'the wicked (al-fajir)'."

What the hadith says

In the chapter "Keeping up the Qur'an and forgetting it", Hammam b. al-Harith reports that the Companion Abu al-Darda' was teaching a man Q44:43-44, "The tree of Zaqqum is the food of the sinner (al-athim)". The man said "the food of the orphan (al-yatim)", so Abu al-Darda' gave him a different word: "the wicked (al-fajir)" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 5986). The report just before it, from Ibrahim, quotes Abd Allah (Ibn Mas'ud): "The error is not that you recite part of the Qur'an in another part, nor that you end a verse 'Forgiving, Merciful' with 'Knowing, Wise' or 'Mighty, Wise'. The error is to recite what is not in it, or to end a verse of mercy with a verse of punishment" (5985). The story is a Companion's teaching practice, not a saying of the Prophet. No grading was found, and it is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an's text has al-athim. When the learner said al-yatim instead, Abu al-Darda' answered with a different word, al-fajir, not the one in the text. On this report a senior Companion treated the meaning as what mattered and the wording as adjustable.

The report beside it says the same in general terms. Ibn Mas'ud, one of the Companions the Prophet named as a teacher of the Qur'an, holds that swapping one pair of divine names at the end of a verse for another is not an error. The claim that every word was fixed and guarded from the start is hard to square with Companions who taught this way.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The usual answer is that this was a teaching device for one learner who said "orphan", a word that changed the meaning, and that a synonym got the meaning across until he could manage the real word. Nobody claimed al-fajir was the text. In the Prophet's lifetime the Qur'an was also allowed to be recited in several modes (ahruf), as in Bukhari 4992, and some flexibility of this kind belongs to that permission.

Why it fails

The seven-modes answer concedes the point. If the Qur'an could be recited in several forms and Companions could supply synonyms for a struggling learner, then its wording in the first generation was not the single fixed text later claimed for it. That variety was curbed only when Uthman had one text copied and sent out (Bukhari 4987).

Nor was this one learner's private lesson. Abd al-Razzaq recorded it in a chapter on keeping the Qur'an, beside Ibn Mas'ud's rule that swapping endings is no error. The early tradition preserved and passed on a looser view of the text than the one Muslims are now taught.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 5986, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 p. 364
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 5985, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 p. 364
• Sahih al-Bukhari 4992
• Sahih al-Bukhari 4987

"No child is born but Allah sends an angel, who takes earth from the ground and puts it on the cut of his navel, and his healing is in it, and his grave is in the place the earth was taken from."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Razzaq's chapter heading states a rule: "He is buried in the soil from which he was created." Ikrima says it directly: "Every person is buried in the soil from which he was created" (6531). Then Abu Hurayra is quoted, through Abu Sulayman al-Hudhali, Nuh b. Abi Bilal and al-Aslami, with the words above (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 6533). In this text they are Abu Hurayra's own words, not attributed to the Prophet. No grading was found, and the saying is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The report describes an unseen procedure at every human birth: an angel brings soil, places it on the cut umbilical cord, the child's healing is in that soil, and the place it came from decides where he will be buried. Abu Hurayra states it as fact, with no source, and the compiler gives it the force of a chapter heading.

It is a claim no one could ever check, made by a Companion as if he had seen it, and it treats the place of a person's grave as fixed at birth by a handful of earth. It is typical of the lore that early Muslims recorded beside their law.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The obvious answer is that Abu Hurayra does not attribute the saying to the Prophet, no grading supports it, and Muslims are not bound by it. Matters of the unseen are accepted only from the Qur'an and sound prophetic reports.

Why it fails

The response is right, and the entry is rated basic. The report does not bind Muslims. It shows how freely a leading Companion, the most prolific narrator of hadith, was quoted on unseen matters without naming the Prophet as his source, and how a compiler turned such lore into a chapter heading.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 6533, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 p. 516
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 6531, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 p. 515

"The polytheism they are in is greater than that, and they were left to it only for the sake of the jizya."

What the hadith says

Qatada reports from "more than one" unnamed source that the caliph Umar b. Abd al-Aziz wrote to his governor Adi b. Artat, asking him to put a question to al-Hasan al-Basri: why were the Magians (Zoroastrians) left free to marry their mothers and sisters? Al-Hasan answered with the words above (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9976). This is a Successor's explanation of policy, not a saying of the Prophet. The same chapter records a stricter policy: Bajala, secretary to one of Umar b. al-Khattab's governors, says a letter came from Umar a year before his death: "Kill every sorcerer, separate every Magian from his close relative [wife], and forbid them their murmuring", and they killed three sorceresses (9972). Bajala's letter is also in Abu Dawud 3043, which adds that Umar did not take jizya from the Magians until Abd al-Rahman b. Awf testified that the Prophet had taken it from the Magians of Hajar. No grading of al-Hasan's answer was found, and it is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Asked by a caliph why Islamic rule tolerated marriages between Magian men and their mothers and sisters, the leading scholar of Basra gave two reasons. Their polytheism (shirk) was already a greater wrong, and they were left alone "only for the sake of the jizya", the tax non-Muslim subjects paid. The tolerance he describes is not respect for another community's law; it is a price. The state allowed what it regarded as incest because the people practising it paid.

The other policy is no better. Umar b. al-Khattab's letter ordered sorcerers killed and Magian couples separated, and was carried out. Between al-Hasan's answer and Umar's letter, the choice the tradition offers is tolerance bought by tax or intervention backed by execution.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The usual answer is that Islamic rule allowed protected communities to keep their own religious and family law, and this was a principle of the covenant (dhimma), not a sale. Al-Hasan's first reason shows the logic: once the community's unbelief is tolerated, its marriage customs follow. His answer also comes through unnamed intermediaries, and Umar b. al-Khattab's letter shows that Muslim rulers did not simply accept such marriages.

Why it fails

Al-Hasan's own words do not fit the "principle" reading. He does not say the Magians were left alone because of a covenant of freedom; he says they were left alone "only for the sake of the jizya". The covenant itself was conditioned on the tax, and Abu Dawud's version shows that whether Magians could pay jizya at all was settled only when a Companion recalled the Prophet's practice.

Umar's letter answers nothing either. It shows that early policy swung between leaving these marriages alone and breaking them up by order, alongside the killing of sorcerers, and that neither was based on the consent of the people concerned.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9976, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 50
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9972, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 49
• Sunan Abi Dawud 3043

"Go and stand him in the sun, and beat his shadow."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Razzaq's chapter heading is "A man who divorces in his sleep, or has a wet dream about another man's mother". In it al-Thawri reports from Sulayman al-Shaybani, from an unnamed man, that a man came to Ali and said: "This man claims he had a wet dream about my mother." Ali said: "Go and stand him in the sun, and beat his shadow" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 11426). It is Ali's ruling, not the Prophet's. The chain has an unnamed man between al-Shaybani and Ali, and no grading was found. The report is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The case is odd rather than cruel. A man brought a complaint to Ali about another man's dream of his mother, and Ali's reply was preserved as a ruling under its own legal heading, beside the question of divorce pronounced in sleep.

It shows how far early legal culture went in treating sexual matters as public business. A dream, which no one can control, was serious enough to be brought to the ruler, and the way he dealt with it was remembered and filed as precedent.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The natural reading is that Ali was mocking the complaint: a dream has no legal effect, so the only thing to "punish" is the man's shadow. Far from being harsh, the ruling protected the dreamer. The chain is also weak.

Why it fails

The response is right, and the entry is rated basic. Ali's answer is best read as a witty dismissal, and the report does not show anyone being punished for a dream. It is included as an example of the questions brought to the early caliphs and of what the compilers chose to keep as law.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 11426, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 411

"'If they obey you': she comes to the bed while she hates you. 'Then seek no way against them.'"

What the hadith says

In the chapter "And strike them" (Q4:34), Sufyan al-Thawri gives the account of "our companions" (ashabuna, his fellow scholars) of the verse's steps: "He begins by admonishing her. If she accepts, [fine]; if not, he forsakes her with his tongue and speaks harshly to her. If she accepts, [fine]; if not, he beats her, a beating that is not severe. 'If they obey you': she comes to the bed while she hates you. 'Then seek no way against them'" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 11878). The chapter before glosses "forsake them": Ibn Abbas, in a report through an unnamed man, says the husband forsakes her with his tongue and speaks harshly, "and does not give up intercourse with her" (11874), and Ikrima says the forsaking is in speech, "not in intercourse" (11875). Qatada and Ibn Tawus describe the beating as "not severe" (11876, 11877). This is exegesis by al-Thawri's unnamed associates, not a hadith, so no grading applies.

Why this is a problem

The gloss defines what the verse means by a wife's "obedience": she comes to her husband's bed, even while she hates him. Her feelings are expressly irrelevant. The steps the verse lays down, admonition, harsh words and then a beating, are steps towards that result, and once it is reached the husband has nothing more to claim.

The neighbouring glosses fill in the picture. The "forsaking" the Qur'an allows is, for Ibn Abbas and Ikrima, harsh speech without any pause in sex. Read together, these early exegetes describe a marriage in which a reluctant wife may be scolded and struck until she returns to bed, and her hatred of her husband counts for nothing once she does.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The gloss can be read as a limit on the husband, not a licence. Once she comes to bed, even hating him, he has no further right against her: "seek no way against them". The beating is restricted to one that is "not severe", and admonition comes first. On this reading the early scholars were narrowing the verse, not widening it.

Why it fails

The restraint reading is fair as far as it goes, and the entry presents it. But the limit it sets is the problem. The husband's right to scold and beat ends at the point where his wife comes to bed, whatever she feels. Her sexual availability is the measure of her obedience, and her hatred of him is no bar to it.

A beating that is "not severe" is still a beating, and the goal it serves here is spelled out. Nothing in these glosses asks why she hates him or gives her hatred any weight.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 11878, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 510
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 11874, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 pp. 509-510
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 11875, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 510
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 11876, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 510
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 11877, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 510

"It was said: Abu Hurayra did not pray over him, and said: 'He is the worst of the three.' Ibn Umar said: 'He is the best of the three.'"

What the hadith says

In the chapter "Praying over the child of fornication and the stoned", Maymun b. Mihran says he saw Ibn Umar pray the funeral prayer over a child born of fornication. Someone said that Abu Hurayra had not prayed over such a one, saying "He is the worst of the three", and Ibn Umar answered: "He is the best of the three" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 6625). The "three" are the child and the two parents. The chain runs through Abu Ma'shar, and no grading was found. Just before it, Ibn Sirin says he knew none of his companions (ashabuna) who refused to pray over anyone who prayed towards the qibla (6624). The saying itself is canonical: in Abu Dawud 3963 Abu Hurayra reports the Prophet saying "the child of fornication is the worst of the three", and adds his own remark that giving a whip in the path of Allah is dearer to him than freeing a child of fornication. Abu Hurayra's refusal of the funeral prayer is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an says "no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another" (Q6:164). Abu Hurayra, on what Ibn Umar was told, applied the opposite rule: he withheld the funeral prayer from someone whose only fault was the circumstances of his birth, and justified it with a saying he elsewhere attributes to the Prophet.

The canonical version does not soften this. In Abu Dawud the Prophet calls such a child the worst of the three, and Abu Hurayra says he would rather give away a whip than free a slave born of fornication. The child is treated as carrying the parents' sin.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The answer is in the report: Ibn Umar corrected Abu Hurayra on the spot, and Ibn Sirin says the early scholars prayed over every Muslim. Scholars have read "the worst of the three" as referring to a particular child, or to one who goes on to act like his parents, not to every child born of fornication. The chain of 6625 is also ungraded.

Why it fails

The response is fair, and the entry is rated basic: the funeral refusal is one Companion's act, rejected by another in the same report. What remains is that the saying behind it is in a canonical collection as the Prophet's words, with Abu Hurayra's own contempt for such children added, and the interpretations that limit it are later attempts to reconcile it with Q6:164.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 6625, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 pp. 536-537
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 6624, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 p. 536
• Sunan Abi Dawud 3963

"They hold to nothing of Christianity except the drinking of wine."

What the hadith says

In the chapter "Slaughter of the People of the Book", Ma'mar reports through Ayyub, Ibn Sirin and Abida al-Salmani that Ali disliked eating animals slaughtered by the Christians of Banu Taghlib, an Arab tribe, and said the words above (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8570). Abd al-Razzaq repeats it in the chapter on taking jizya from the Magians (10034); the two places are the same report, not independent witnesses. It is Ali's opinion about one tribe, not the Prophet's word. No grading was found online. A different Ali report about Taghlib is in Abu Dawud 3040, where Ali threatens to kill their fighters and take their children captive for breaking a pledge not to raise their children as Christians; Abu Dawud himself calls it munkar (rejected).

Why this is a problem

Q5:5 makes the food of those given the Scripture lawful for Muslims. Ali disliked eating the slaughter of an Arab Christian tribe, not because of how they slaughtered but because he judged their Christianity to be fake: all they kept of it, he says, was the wine.

A ruler deciding which of his subjects' religion is genuine enough to count, and dismissing a whole tribe's faith in one line, is the issue. The status that Q5:5 gives to Christians becomes conditional on a Muslim ruler's opinion of how seriously they take their religion.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim response to this report was located. The answer would be that Ali spoke about a single tribe whose Christianity was, in his view, nominal, and that the question was a technical one: whether they really were People of the Book under Q5:5. His remark says nothing about Christians in general, and the majority view allows their slaughter.

Why it fails

The response is largely right, and the entry is rated basic. The remark concerns one tribe and expresses Ali's personal dislike rather than a binding rule. It is included because it shows a caliph sitting in judgment on the sincerity of his Christian subjects' faith, and using that judgment to cast doubt on a recognition the Qur'an gives.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 8570, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 4 p. 485
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 10034, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 6 p. 72
• Sunan Abi Dawud 3040

"He killed their fighting men and took their offspring captive, and sold them to Masqala for a hundred thousand. He paid him fifty, and fifty remained, and Ali allowed that."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18715, in the chapter on unbelief after faith, Abu al-Tufayl, a late Companion, says that Ali sent Ma'qil al-Sulami against the Banu Najiya. Ma'qil found them in three groups: Christians who had become Muslim, Christians who had stayed Christian, and people who had become Muslim and then gone back from Islam to Christianity. He agreed a signal with his men: when they saw it, they were to "put the weapons" to the third group only. They did so. He killed their fighting men (muqatila) and enslaved their offspring (dhurari), selling them to a man named Masqala for 100,000, of which Masqala paid half. Ali let the sale stand. Masqala then fled to Mu'awiya and freed the captives; Ali let the manumission stand too, and went to Masqala's house and damaged it. This is the act of Ali's commander, approved by Ali, not a saying of the Prophet. The al-A'zami edition prints no grading, and no grading of this wording was found; but al-Ayni says of a parallel version through Ammar al-Duhni from Abu al-Tufayl, in which Ali gives the order and himself sells the children to Masqala b. Hubayra, rijaluhu thiqat (its narrators are reliable); the chain runs Ibn Uyayna, Ammar al-Duhni, Abu al-Tufayl.

Why this is a problem

The Banu Najiya episode shows the apostasy law applied to a whole community in the field. The Christians who had never converted were left alone; the Muslims were left alone; the one group singled out for killing was the people whose crime was to return to their former religion. Their offspring, who had chosen nothing, were sold to a buyer for cash. The rule "whoever changes his religion, kill him" (Bukhari 3017) here becomes a military operation with a signal for the slaughter and a price for the children.

The person who approves it is not a minor governor but Ali, the fourth caliph, whom Sunnis count among the rightly guided and Shi'is regard as the first Imam. He did not object to the killing or the enslavement; in this report he let the sale stand with half the price unpaid. The children were freed by the buyer after he defected to Ali's rival, and Ali then accepted that too.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim answer to this report was found. The general Sunni position is that the killing of the male apostate is a fixed penalty, that Ali was a rightly guided caliph acting against people in revolt, and that rulings made in wartime against rebels cannot be judged by modern standards. A Muslim may also point out that no critic has graded this wording, which is found in this form only in the Musannaf, and that the children were in the end set free.

Why it fails

The report gives no sign of a revolt: it sorts the population by religion and names the single criterion for the attack, that these people "became Muslim and then returned from Islam to Christianity". The other two groups, including Christians who had always been Christian, were not touched, so in the report the dividing line is religion, not fighting. That the children were freed is true, but it was the buyer's act, done after he fled; Ali's part in the report is to approve both the sale and, later, the freeing.

This wording is ungraded, not graded weak, its transmitters are named, and al-Ayni says the narrators of a parallel version are reliable. Abd al-Razzaq placed it in the chapter on unbelief after faith, and it preserves without comment a caliph's approval of killing apostates and selling their children.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18715, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 pp. 171-172
• Sahih al-Bukhari 3017
• Grading: al-Ayni, Nukhab al-Afkar 12/172 (parallel version: Ammar al-Duhni from Abu al-Tufayl): rijaluhu thiqat (its narrators are reliable)

"She is taken captive and sold; and so did Abu Bakr with the women of the people of the apostasy: he sold them."

What the hadith says

In the chapter "The woman who disbelieves after her Islam", Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18728 gives the ruling of Qatada, a Successor of Basra, quoted above. Just before it al-Hasan al-Basri says she "is taken captive and compelled" (18727), and in Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30939 al-Hasan spells it out: "Do not kill women if they leave Islam; they are called to Islam, and if they refuse they are taken captive and made slave-women of the Muslims, and are not killed." The same chapters record the harsher view that she is asked to repent and otherwise killed (al-Zuhri and Ibrahim, 18725-18726). Al-Hasan is also reported in the same Ibn Abi Shayba chapter saying she is not killed but imprisoned (30940), and that she is asked to repent and otherwise killed (30942). These are the rulings of Successors, not of the Prophet, and Qatada's claim about Abu Bakr gives no source (Qatada was born decades after Abu Bakr). No named critic's grading of the Qatada or al-Hasan sayings was found. A report that Ali held the female apostate is enslaved is graded weak by Ibn Qudama (al-Mughni 12/282).

Why this is a problem

The site already records the view that the apostate woman is killed. These reports show that, for two of the most cited Successors of Basra, the alternative to death was slavery. A free Muslim woman who changed her religion would lose her freedom, become the property of a Muslim owner and be sold. Al-Hasan's word for what follows is that she is "compelled", that is, pressed back into Islam while enslaved.

Qatada also roots the rule in the founding years of the caliphate: Abu Bakr, he says, sold the women of the apostates of the ridda wars. Whether or not that claim is accurate, it shows how a Successor jurist understood the precedent. For these jurists the alternative to killing her was captivity, not freedom.

The Muslim response

Muslims point out that these are opinions of individual Successors, not prophetic texts, and that the chapters themselves disagree: Ibn Abbas is reported saying female apostates are not killed but imprisoned, called to Islam and compelled to it (Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30936, graded weak by its editor al-Shathri), and the Hanafi school holds she is imprisoned. Most jurists (Malik, al-Shafi'i, Ahmad) hold she is asked to repent and otherwise killed. Enslavement was a minority opinion that the schools did not adopt.

Why it fails

That is true of the schools, but it does not help the woman. The majority view the response appeals to is execution; Bukhari's own chapter heading records Ibn Umar, al-Zuhri and Ibrahim saying the female apostate is killed (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab Istitabat al-Murtaddin, chapter heading). The positions on offer in these chapters are death, slavery, or prison with compulsion. None of them leaves an adult woman free to change her religion.

Calling slavery a minority opinion also understates who held it. Al-Hasan al-Basri and Qatada are among the most quoted authorities of early Islamic law and exegesis, and two separate early collections preserved the view under their names, though al-Hasan is also reported holding the other two views.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18728, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 176
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18727, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 176
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18725, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 176
• Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30939, ed. al-Shathri, vol. 16 p. 47
• Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30939 (al-Hut numbering 28996), ed. al-Hut, vol. 5 p. 563
• Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30936, ed. al-Shathri, vol. 16 p. 46
• Sahih al-Bukhari, chapter on the ruling on the male and female apostate (Sultaniyya print, vol. 9 p. 14)
• Grading: Ibn Qudama, al-Mughni 12/282 (on a report from Ali that the female apostate is enslaved; not this report): da'if (weak)
• Grading: al-Shathri, editor's footnote to Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30936 (Ibn Abbas: imprisoned and compelled): da'if (weak), because of Asim's weakness in narrating from Abu Razin

"Three of the merchants passed a slave-girl from one to another, and she gave birth. So Umar b. al-Khattab called the qafa, and they attached her child to one of them."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12896, in the chapter on the waiting period of a slave-girl who is sold, the Meccan Successor Ata says that three merchants had a slave-girl pass from one to another, and that she gave birth. Umar called the qafa, experts who judged descent by physical resemblance, and they assigned the child to one of the three. Umar then ruled: "Whoever buys a slave-girl who has reached menstruation, let him wait with her until she menstruates; and if she has not menstruated, let him wait with her forty-five nights." This is Umar's ruling as reported by Ata, not a saying of the Prophet. Ata did not meet Umar (he was born in Uthman's reign), so the report is broken at that link; that is our observation, as no named critic's grading was found and the al-A'zami edition prints none. The al-A'zami print is the only public copy we found at this number.

Why this is a problem

The case only arises because each owner in turn could use the girl sexually. The text does not say that all three did, but a paternity dispute that needs three candidates and a panel of physiognomists implies that more than one of them could be the father. Umar's response is not to question the practice but to regulate it: buyers should wait a menstrual cycle, or forty-five nights, before intercourse, so that the next child's father can be known.

The rule also covers a purchased girl who "has not menstruated". The text does not give her age, and the phrase can describe an adult who does not menstruate; but the ruling makes no exception for a girl too young to menstruate. In either case the waiting period exists to clear the way for the new owner's intercourse, and the girl's own will does not enter the discussion. The canonical rule for captives has the same purpose (Abu Dawud 2157: no intercourse with a non-pregnant captive until she has had one menstrual period).

The Muslim response

Jurists cite reports like this for the rule of istibra', the waiting period that confirms a woman is not pregnant before a new owner may approach her. On this reading Umar acted to protect lineage, so that a child would always have a known father and the rights that come with one. The report is also broken between Ata and Umar.

Why it fails

Protecting lineage is the stated aim, and it is real; but it is lineage within a system in which a girl can be sold on from owner to owner and each owner may have intercourse with her. The waiting period does not limit that system; it keeps it running smoothly. The use of qafa is canonical as well: the Prophet was pleased when a physiognomist matched Usama's feet to Zayd's (Bukhari 6770).

The broken chain is a fair point about Umar's personal role. It does not change what the report shows about the practice Ata described and the Musannaf recorded under its own chapter heading.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12896, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 225
• Sunan Abi Dawud 2157
• Sahih al-Bukhari 6770

"There is no blood-money in that and no retaliation, whether the beating is little or much, if it is in proportion to the offence."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18536, in the chapter on a man's liability when he exceeds the bounds in punishing, Sa'id b. al-Musayyib of Medina, one of the leading Successors, is asked about "a man who beats his wife, or his hired man, or his slave, or the ruler within his authority". He answers as quoted above, and adds the exception: if the man goes beyond the punishment the offence deserves and the person perishes at his hands, blood-money becomes due, once the dead person's kin swear fifty oaths that he died of the excess. This is a Successor's legal opinion, not a hadith. No grading of the report by a named critic was found, and the al-A'zami edition prints none. The al-A'zami print is the only public copy we found at this number.

Why this is a problem

The opinion does set a limit, but look at what lies inside it. A wife is placed in the same list as a hired labourer, a slave and the subject of a ruler: all are people whom the man in charge may punish physically. As long as the beating matches the "offence", there is no compensation and no retaliation "whether the beating is little or much". The opinion does not say who judges what the offence deserves; in the first instance it is the man who beats.

Liability arises only in the last case: the excess was proved and the victim died, and even then the remedy is blood-money, not retaliation, after the kin swear fifty oaths. A wife who is injured by a beating judged proportionate has, on this view, no claim at all. The canonical collections have a milder parallel, "a man will not be asked why he beat his wife", which the site's reader marks as weak (Abu Dawud 2147).

The Muslim response

Muslim jurists generally limit the husband's "beating" of Q 4:34 to a light blow that does not injure, and hold him liable for harm. Ibn al-Musayyib's own answer contains a limit: the beating must be in proportion to the offence, and a man who exceeds it is liable. It is one Successor's opinion, not a ruling of the Prophet.

Why it fails

The later restriction to a light, harmless blow is not what Ibn al-Musayyib says. His words are "little or much", and his only test is proportion to the offence; the only liability he names is for a death caused by excess; he says nothing of injury. He was one of the most respected jurists of Medina, and Abd al-Razzaq placed his answer as a ruling under a chapter heading on liability.

The grouping is the point. In this early legal discussion, a wife's body falls under the same rule of discipline as a slave's and a servant's.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 18536, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 105
• Sunan Abi Dawud 2147

"And if she is a small girl who has not reached [it], it does no harm to her family to adorn her or perfume her, if they wish."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12148, in the chapter on what a widow must avoid, the Meccan Successor Ata distinguishes two cases. If her husband dies when she is a girl who "has reached men" (is ready for marriage), even if she has not yet menstruated, she must keep the same rules as a woman who menstruates: no talk of a future marriage, no adornment, no perfume. If she is "a small girl who has not reached [it]", her family may adorn and perfume her if they wish. This is Ata's own legal opinion, not a hadith. No grading by a named critic was found, and the al-A'zami edition prints none. The al-A'zami print is the only public copy we found at this number.

Why this is a problem

Ata's ruling takes for granted that a girl can be married, and widowed, while still "small". He needs two categories of child widow: one who is physically ready for men though she has never menstruated, and one who is not yet ready at all. Both are wives whose husbands have died; the only question is what mourning they owe.

That is the practical side of the Qur'an's waiting period for "those who have not menstruated" (Q 65:4) and of Aisha's marriage at six (Bukhari 5133). It shows one of the leading jurists of Mecca treating the widowhood of a married child as an ordinary case to be settled, not as something to be prevented.

The Muslim response

Muslim writers say that the marriage of minors in early Islam was a contract arranged by guardians, with consummation deferred until the girl was physically ready, and that many Muslim countries now restrict it by law. Ata's ruling, on this reading, concerns the legal status of a contract, and the text does not say the marriage was consummated.

Why it fails

The text does not say the marriage was consummated, and the entry does not claim it. But the response concedes the main point: a pre-pubescent girl could be a wife and, when her husband died, a widow with legal obligations. The first category in Ata's ruling, a girl who "has reached men" though she has not menstruated, also shows that readiness for men was judged without reference to menstruation.

Modern laws restricting child marriage were made against this inherited jurisprudence, not drawn from it.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12148, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 52
• Sahih al-Bukhari 5133

"It will cook the disbeliever thoroughly, until the belly of one of them says: ghiq ghiq."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20850 (the Jami' of Ma'mar, in the chapter on the coming of the Hour), the Companion Salman al-Farisi says that on the Day of Resurrection the sun will come within a bow's length (or two) of people's heads and be given the heat of ten years. No one will have a scrap of clothing on, yet no believer's nakedness will be seen and its heat will not harm any believer, man or woman, "and it will cook the disbeliever thoroughly, until the belly of one of them says: ghiq ghiq", the sound of boiling. These are Salman's words, not attributed to the Prophet. Versions of Salman's saying without the "ghiq ghiq" line (the heat of ten years, the bow's length) are graded isnaduhu jayyid (good chain) by al-Qastallani; no grading of this exact wording was found.

Why this is a problem

The canonical hadith on the sun at the Resurrection describes people sweating "according to their deeds" (Muslim 2864). Salman's version divides the crowd by belief instead: the same sun leaves believers untouched and boils unbelievers from the inside, before any judgement has taken place. The image is not a metaphor for remorse but a sound effect of a body cooking.

Salman was a Companion, and the core of his saying is graded good by al-Qastallani. The "ghiq ghiq" ending was transmitted in Ma'mar's Jami' and kept by Abd al-Razzaq. It shows the kind of relish for the suffering of unbelievers that circulated as early eschatology.

The Muslim response

Muslims read this as a description of the terrors of the Standing before judgement, in which believers are shaded and protected. It is a Companion's words, not the Prophet's, and the graded versions do not contain the "ghiq ghiq" line. The canonical hadith in Muslim already says people will suffer in the heat according to their deeds.

Why it fails

The response is right that the vivid line is not graded and is not prophetic, and the entry is rated accordingly. But the graded versions still have the sun given the heat of ten years and brought within a bow's length, and Ibn al-Mubarak's version adds that its heat will not harm believers, so the division of the crowd by belief is not confined to the ungraded line. At the least, early Muslims transmitted an image of the Resurrection in which unbelievers are cooked alive by the sun while believers stand untouched beside them.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20850, Jami' of Ma'mar in ed. al-A'zami, vol. 11 p. 403
• Sahih Muslim 2864
• Grading: al-Qastallani, Irshad al-Sari 9/310 and 7/205 (on Salman's 'heat of ten years' report, a parallel wording without 'ghiq ghiq'): isnaduhu jayyid (good chain)

"Do not, for the Dajjal is in it, the rebellious jinn are in it, nine-tenths of sorcery is in it, and every incurable disease is in it."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20461 (the Jami' of Ma'mar, chapter "Iraq"), the Successor Tawus says that Umar wanted to settle in Iraq and that Ka'b al-Ahbar, a Yemeni Jewish convert, told him not to, giving the reasons quoted above. The narrator glosses "every incurable disease" as "the heresies" (al-ahwa'). These are Ka'b's words, not the Prophet's. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut notes that Tawus did not meet Umar, so the chain is broken, and quotes Mu'awiya's verdict on Ka'b: he was among the most truthful of those who narrate from the People of the Book, "though even so we used to find falsehood in him". The same wording appears on the dorar card, confirming the text.

Why this is a problem

The advice is presented as knowledge about the unseen: where the Antichrist is, where the rebel jinn live, and what share of the world's sorcery is found in one country. Nothing in the report says where Ka'b got this. It is the lore of a convert from Judaism told to the caliph as a reason for a political decision, and transmitted onward by Tawus, his son and Ma'mar into one of the earliest hadith collections.

The canonical hadith point east in a similar way: the Prophet points to the east and says that afflictions will come from where "the horn of Satan" rises (Bukhari 3279), and the Dajjal is to emerge from "a land in the east called Khurasan" (Tirmidhi 2237). Ka'b's version turns that into a geography of jinn and magic, measured in tenths.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars class Ka'b's reports as Isra'iliyyat, material from Jewish and Christian sources that is neither believed nor denied unless Islamic sources confirm or reject it. Al-Arna'ut's note shows the critical attitude: the chain is broken, and Mu'awiya himself said falsehood was found in Ka'b. Nothing in Islamic doctrine depends on this report.

Why it fails

That is a fair answer, and the entry is rated basic for that reason. What it shows is the channel. Ka'b sat with the caliphs, his statements about the unseen were remembered and passed on by leading Successors, and Mu'awiya's own judgement was that he was among the most truthful of such narrators even though falsehood was found in him. Some of the early tradition's material on the end times came through people like him, and the line between his lore and prophetic material was not always kept by those who transmitted it.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20461, Jami' of Ma'mar in ed. al-A'zami, vol. 11 p. 251
• dorar.net card: al-Arna'ut, Takhrij Sharh al-Sunna 14/211, same text
• Sahih al-Bukhari 3279
• Jami' al-Tirmidhi 2237
• Grading: Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut, Takhrij Sharh al-Sunna 14/211: Tawus lam yudrik Umar (Tawus did not meet Umar: broken chain); quotes Mu'awiya that falsehood was found in Ka'b

"If Umar had prayed, he would have been given a delay in his term. The people said: Glory be to Allah! Has Allah not said: When their term comes, they cannot delay it an hour, nor bring it forward?"

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20386 (the Jami' of Ma'mar, chapter on the Prophet's Companions), Sa'id b. al-Musayyib says that when Umar was stabbed, Ka'b al-Ahbar said that if Umar had prayed, his death would have been postponed. The people objected with the Qur'anic verse that when a people's term comes it cannot be delayed an hour or brought forward (Q 7:34 and 16:61). Ka'b answered with Q 35:11: "no one is given long life, nor is his life cut short, except it is in a Book". Al-Zuhri then reports the view people held (yarawna): once a person's term has arrived it is not delayed an hour, but before it arrives Allah delays and advances what He wills; and everyone has a term and a written lifespan. These are the words of Ka'b, the people present and al-Zuhri, not of the Prophet. No grading by a named critic was found, and the al-A'zami edition prints none.

Why this is a problem

The exchange records a theological problem the community felt at once. If every lifespan is fixed and written, prayer cannot lengthen it; if prayer can lengthen it, the term was not fixed. The people's objection is the plain reading of the Qur'an. Ka'b's answer and al-Zuhri's solution create a two-stage term: one that Allah can move before it arrives, and one that cannot be moved once it does.

The same tension runs through the canonical texts. The Prophet says that whoever wants his provision increased and his term prolonged should keep ties of kinship (Bukhari 5986), while the Qur'an says that when the term comes it cannot be delayed an hour. The report shows the harmonisation being worked out after the Prophet's death, by Ka'b at the caliph's deathbed and in the view al-Zuhri reports a generation later, not settled by a ruling of the Prophet.

The Muslim response

Scholars distinguish the term recorded with the angels, which can be changed by prayer or good deeds, from the term in Allah's eternal knowledge, which never changes. Allah knows in advance whether a person will pray and what his final lifespan will be. This is essentially al-Zuhri's answer in the report itself, so the report contains its own resolution.

Why it fails

The distinction removes the contradiction only by saying that the "delay" is not a real change: the final term was always what Allah knew it would be. In that case Ka'b's claim that Umar's term "would have been delayed" had he prayed describes nothing that could have happened. The people's objection was answered by redefining the term, not by showing that prayer could alter a fixed decree. The report is useful because it shows the question being raised by the first generation, and the answer being supplied by a view a Successor reports.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20386, Jami' of Ma'mar in ed. al-A'zami, vol. 11 p. 224
• Sahih al-Bukhari 5986

"I am Allah, Lord of Bakka. I created good and evil: blessed is he at whose hands is good, and woe to him at whose hands is evil."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20071 (the Jami' of Ma'mar, chapter on Predestination), al-Zuhri says: "It reached me that they found in the Station of Abraham three slabs, on each of which was writing." The first: "I am Allah, Lord of Bakka; I fashioned it the day I fashioned the sun, surrounded it with seven angels, and blessed its people in meat and milk." The second: "I am Allah, Lord of Bakka; I created the womb and derived for it a name from My name: whoever joins it, I join him, and whoever cuts it, I cut him off." The third is quoted above. Abd al-Razzaq repeats it in his chapter "The Station, and what is written on it" (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9219), next to Ibn Abbas's report of another inscription on the Station (9216). Al-Zuhri names no source, so this is hearsay, not a hadith. A fuller version through Jubayr b. Mut'im says Quraysh found the stone before Islam and that only a learned man (habr) from Yemen could read it; al-Busiri grades that version sanaduhu da'if (weak chain).

Why this is a problem

An inscription found in the Ka'ba's precinct, which in Jubayr's version Quraysh found in pagan times and could not read, is reported in the first person as the speech of Allah. Its middle line is the same divine saying that the canonical collections attribute to the Prophet as a hadith qudsi: the womb whose name is derived from Allah's name (Abu Dawud 1694). The report thus puts a saying that the canonical collections give as revelation to the Prophet on a stone that, in Jubayr's version, was there before Islam and had to be read out by a learned man from Yemen.

The third slab states in plain terms that Allah created evil as well as good, and then pronounces woe on those through whom the evil comes. That is orthodox Sunni teaching on predestination, which is why al-Zuhri's report was filed under that chapter, but it sharpens the problem of blaming people for an evil their Creator made.

The Muslim response

No specific Muslim answer to this report was found. Such reports are treated as weak historical lore: al-Zuhri gives no source, and the Jubayr version is graded weak by al-Busiri. On predestination, Sunni theology holds that Allah creates all things, good and evil, while human beings acquire and are responsible for their acts; the slab says nothing a Sunni theologian would deny.

Why it fails

The response is right that this is lore, and the entry is rated basic. Its value is what it shows about early transmission. Al-Zuhri, one of the most important figures in early hadith, passed on an anonymous report of divine speech found on stones at the Ka'ba, Ma'mar recorded it, and Abd al-Razzaq placed it twice in his collection, once as evidence on predestination. That the slab's theology is orthodox is the point: the inscription was welcome because it said what the tradition already taught.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20071, Jami' of Ma'mar in ed. al-A'zami, vol. 11 p. 114
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9219, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 149
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 9216, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 5 p. 149
• dorar.net card: al-Busiri, Ithaf al-Khiyara al-Mahara 5/479 (Jubayr b. Mut'im version)
• Sunan Abi Dawud 1694
• Grading: al-Busiri, Ithaf al-Khiyara al-Mahara 5/479 (on the parallel through Jubayr b. Mut'im, not al-Zuhri's report): sanaduhu da'if (weak chain)

"Abu Bakr bought a foreign slave-girl from a man who had had intercourse with her, and she had become pregnant by him. Abu Bakr wanted to have intercourse with her, but she held out against him and told him she was pregnant."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12528, in the chapter on a man who has intercourse with his concubine and then denies her pregnancy, Ghaylan b. Anas says that Abu Bakr bought a non-Arab slave-girl from a man who had had intercourse with her and made her pregnant. Abu Bakr wanted to have intercourse with her; she held out against him and told him she was pregnant. He took the matter to the Prophet, who said: "She guarded, so Allah guarded for her", followed by an obscure saying about a man who seeks pasture at that pasture, and returned her to her owner. Ghaylan is not a Companion and did not see Abu Bakr or the Prophet, so the report is broken; that is our observation, as no named critic's grading was found and the al-A'zami edition prints none. The al-A'zami print is the only public copy we found at this number.

Why this is a problem

As the report tells it, Abu Bakr, later the first caliph, bought a woman and moved to have intercourse with her, without knowing whether she was pregnant. It was the girl, not Abu Bakr, who stopped it, by resisting him and telling him. The Prophet's praise goes to her ("she guarded, so Allah guarded for her"), and the remedy is to send her back to the man who had made her pregnant and sold her.

The canonical law says the same thing in general terms: a pregnant captive may not be approached until she gives birth (Abu Dawud 2157), and the Prophet threatened a man who meant to approach a woman far gone in pregnancy with a curse that would follow him to the grave (Muslim 1441a). The report puts Abu Bakr, of all people, in that position, and in neither text is the woman asked whether she consents to the man who owns her.

The Muslim response

The chain is broken, so the report cannot establish anything about Abu Bakr. If it is accepted, it shows the Prophet enforcing the rule against intercourse with a pregnant slave-woman and protecting her and the child, which is to Islam's credit rather than against it.

Why it fails

The broken chain is a real weakness, and the entry does not claim Abu Bakr had intercourse with her; the report says he did not. But the response accepts the frame in which the protection works: the child's lineage is protected, and the woman is returned to the seller as his property. Nothing in the Prophet's praise concerns her consent; in context what she guarded is the pregnancy. The report was kept by Abd al-Razzaq as a legal precedent under its chapter heading, and nothing in it questions the purchase itself.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 12528, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 134
• Sunan Abi Dawud 2157
• Sahih Muslim 1441a

"If you are truthful we will stone him, and if you are lying we will flog you eighty."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13437, in the chapter on a woman who accuses her husband over her slave-girl, the Successor Hujayya b. Adi says a woman came to Ali and said her husband had had intercourse with her slave-girl. Ali gave the answer quoted above. She said: "Woe to her! A jealous, angry woman", speaking of herself; the prayer was called and she went away. The report does not say what happened next. These are Ali's words, not the Prophet's. No grading of this chain was found. The same exchange, without the number eighty, is in Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30437 through Ikrima, which its editor al-Shathri grades sahih; a third version (30438) is graded majhul (unknown narrator).

Why this is a problem

A wife brings a complaint about her husband and her own slave-girl, and the first thing she hears from the caliph is a threat. Ali's words are "if you are lying", but under Q 24:4, which the eighty lashes echo, a charge of zina not backed by four witnesses is punished as slander. A woman in her position will rarely have them, so Ali's answer tells her, in effect, that reporting the act is more dangerous to her than to him. She withdraws at once, calling herself jealous and angry.

No one in the report asks about the slave-girl. The threat of stoning implies that Ali counted the husband's act as zina because the girl belonged to his wife and not to him; had he owned her, there would be no offence at all. The canonical rulings on the same case also turn on ownership and permission: a hundred lashes if the wife had made the girl lawful to him, stoning if not (Abu Dawud 4458, marked weak on the site's reader). In another Musannaf report Ali says that if such a man had come to him he would have smashed his head with stones (Ibn Abi Shayba 30448, graded broken).

The Muslim response

Ali was applying the Qur'an. An accusation of zina without four witnesses is punished with eighty lashes (Q 24:4), and the rule protects people's honour from unproven charges. Ali's answer was a warning to be sure of what she said, and the case shows that a husband who had intercourse with his wife's slave-girl faced the full penalty.

Why it fails

That is an accurate account of the law, and it is the problem. The rule designed to protect honour works here to silence a wife with a complaint about her own household. Its standard of four eyewitnesses is all but impossible to meet for something that happens behind closed doors, and the penalty for failing falls on her. The sound version in Ibn Abi Shayba confirms that Ali met the complaint with the threat of flogging her.

The protection is also selective. The man could be excused: Umar had such a man flogged a hundred lashes and excused him on account of ignorance (Bukhari 2290). The slave-girl's own position is not discussed in any version.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13437, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 347
• Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30437, ed. al-Shathri, vol. 15 pp. 433-434
• Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30437 (al-Hut numbering 28535), ed. al-Hut, vol. 5 p. 515
• Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30438, ed. al-Shathri, vol. 15 p. 434
• Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30448, ed. al-Shathri, vol. 15 p. 436
• Sunan Abi Dawud 4458
• Sahih al-Bukhari 2290
• Grading: al-Shathri, editor's footnote to Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30437 (the parallel through Ikrima): sahih (sound)
• Grading: al-Shathri, editor's footnote to Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30438: majhul (unknown), because Mubarak b. Umara is unknown
• Grading: al-Shathri, editor's footnote to Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30448: munqati' (broken): Ibrahim did not meet Ibn Mas'ud or Ali

"Umar b. al-Khattab intended to write in the mushaf that the Messenger of Allah flogged eighty for wine and fixed Dhat Irq [as the place of ihram] for the people of Iraq."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13548, in the chapter on the penalty for wine, al-Hasan al-Basri says that Umar intended to write in the mushaf, the written copy of the Qur'an, two rulings of the Prophet: eighty lashes for wine, and Dhat Irq as the point where pilgrims from Iraq enter the state of ihram. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades al-Hasan's report isnaduhu munqati' (broken chain; al-Hasan, born two years before Umar's death, did not hear from him), and al-Shawkani calls the wording in which Umar says "I intended to write in the mushaf that the Messenger of Allah flogged eighty for wine" shadhdh (anomalous). The dorar cards give the same wording.

Why this is a problem

The report has the second caliph wanting to put into the Qur'an's written copy two rulings that are not Qur'anic verses. That raises the question of what the mushaf was to its first guardians: a closed text of revelation, or a book into which a caliph could consider adding the Prophet's practice.

The report also contradicts the sound hadith on its own subject. In the canonical accounts the Prophet set no number of eighty: drinkers were beaten with hands, shoes and garments in his time, and it was Umar who later raised the penalty to eighty (Bukhari 6779); Anas says the Prophet gave about forty, and Umar fixed eighty after consulting the Companions (Muslim 1706a). Here the eighty is credited to the Prophet himself and considered worth writing into scripture.

The Muslim response

Scholars reject the report: al-Arna'ut grades its chain broken and al-Shawkani calls it anomalous. It contradicts the sound reports that the eighty lashes were Umar's own decision, and no Muslim relies on it for the Qur'an or for the wine penalty.

Why it fails

The response is correct about the grading, and the entry does not present the report as sound. Its interest lies in what was transmitted. A report that a caliph meant to write the Prophet's rulings into the mushaf was passed on by al-Hasan, the most famous Successor of Basra, and kept by Abd al-Razzaq under the wine penalty. Al-Shawkani's anomalous wording, in which Umar says it himself, shows the idea circulated in more than one form.

It also shows how the eighty lashes acquired a prophetic origin. The sound texts say the number was Umar's; this report, which was in circulation, assigns it to the Prophet. Either way, the sound reports place the eighty lashes after the Prophet's death.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13548, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 379
• dorar.net cards: al-Arna'ut, Takhrij Zad al-Ma'ad 5/42; al-Shawkani, Nayl al-Awtar 7/320
• Sahih al-Bukhari 6779
• Sahih Muslim 1706a
• Grading: Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut, Takhrij Zad al-Ma'ad 5/42: isnaduhu munqati' (broken chain)
• Grading: al-Shawkani, Nayl al-Awtar 7/320 (Umar's own words, 'I intended to write in the mushaf...'): shadhdh (anomalous)

"Yes, by Allah, I am a Jew son of a Jew, since many men do not know their fathers. ... If the one he said it to has a known father, apply the hadd to the Jew. So he flogged him eighty lashes."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13719, in the chapter on insinuation (ta'rid), Hafs b. Umar b. Rafi' says his father had a heated dispute with a Jew over a right of pre-emption, and called him "a Jew son of a Jew". The Jew replied as quoted above. The local official wrote to Umar b. Abd al-Aziz, then governor of Medina, who wrote back: if the man he said this to has a known father, apply the hadd to the Jew. So he was flogged eighty lashes. This is a ruling of Umar b. Abd al-Aziz as governor, not of the Prophet. No grading by a named critic was found, and the al-A'zami edition prints none. The al-A'zami print is the only public copy we found at this number.

Why this is a problem

The Muslim opened the exchange by using the man's religion and his father's as an insult. The Jew turned the phrase back: at least he knew who his father was. For that he received the full Qur'anic penalty for slander, eighty lashes, because his words were taken as an insinuation that the Muslim's paternity was doubtful. The report records no penalty for the Muslim's words.

The ruling came from Umar b. Abd al-Aziz, later the Umayyad caliph, and Abd al-Razzaq filed it as a precedent on insinuation.

The Muslim response

Insinuated slander was treated as real slander by some jurists, especially in the Maliki school, and the ruling protected the honour of a man's lineage regardless of the speaker's religion. The Muslim's words were literally true: the man was a Jew and the son of a Jew. The Jew's reply implied that the Muslim's mother had committed zina, which is the offence the eighty lashes punish.

Why it fails

That is how the jurists saw it, and the entry is rated basic because the ruling follows the law's own logic. But that logic shows the asymmetry. An insult framed as a fact about a man's religion and ancestry drew no penalty in the report; a retort that hinted at doubt about a Muslim's father earned a flogging. The condition Umar b. Abd al-Aziz set, "if the one he said it to has a known father", shows that the question was the Muslim's honour, not who had started the quarrel. The report is one ruling by one governor, single-sourced, and should be read as that.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13719, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 423

"What is his reading? Poetry. What is his writing? Tattooing. ... Where is his dwelling? The bath-house. Where is his sitting-place? The markets. What is his voice? The flute. What are his snares? Women."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20511 (the Jami' of Ma'mar, in the chapter on poetry and rajaz verse), the Successor Qatada says that when Iblis was cast down he said: "My Lord, You have cursed him; what is his work?" The answers follow: his work is sorcery, his reading poetry, his writing tattooing, his food every carcass and whatever is slaughtered without Allah's name, his drink every intoxicant, his dwelling the bath-house, his sitting-place the markets, his voice the flute, and his snares women. These are Qatada's words in this collection. Ibn al-Qayyim quotes Qatada's list and says al-ma'ruf waqfuhu: it is known as Qatada's own saying, though it is also narrated from the Prophet. A version attributed to the Prophet through Ibn Abbas is in al-Diya' al-Maqdisi's al-Mukhtara, who says he knows it only through that one chain, and al-Albani calls that version munkar (denounced) on the same dorar page.

Why this is a problem

The list puts women in the same column as sorcery, intoxicants, carrion and the flute: they are the devil's hunting tools. Poetry, the high art of the Arabs, becomes his recitation, and tattooing his writing. The point is not that some women tempt or some poems mislead, but that these things as such belong to Iblis.

The idea is not confined to one Successor's sermon. The canonical hadith says the Prophet left behind no trial more harmful to men than women (Bukhari 5096) and that Allah curses the woman who tattoos or is tattooed (Bukhari 5937). Qatada's list gathers these attitudes into one picture of Satan's kingdom, and Ibn al-Qayyim repeated it in his Ighathat al-Lahfan.

The Muslim response

This is a Successor's moral warning, not a hadith, and the versions that attribute it to the Prophet are weak: al-Diya' knew it through only one chain and al-Albani judged it munkar. "Snares" does not mean women are evil; it means Satan uses men's desire for women to lead them astray, as he uses wealth and power. The same warning is given in the canonical hadith about trials.

Why it fails

It is true that the list is Qatada's, and the entry does not attribute it to the Prophet. But the response's reading is gentler than the text. In the list women are not one temptation among wealth and power; they are the only human beings named, and they stand beside carrion, wine and sorcery as Iblis's equipment. The trap is described from the man's side: it is men who are hunted, and women who are the snare.

Ibn al-Qayyim cited the saying, and others circulated it as the Prophet's own words, which is why al-Albani had to rule on it. If, as Ibn al-Qayyim says, the saying is known as Qatada's, his image of women as Satan's snares travelled far enough to be put in the Prophet's mouth.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20511, Jami' of Ma'mar in ed. al-A'zami, vol. 11 p. 268
• dorar.net cards: Ibn al-Qayyim, Ighathat al-Lahfan 1/377; al-Diya', al-Mukhtara 11/185; al-Albani, al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 6055
• Sahih al-Bukhari 5096
• Sahih al-Bukhari 5937
• Grading: Ibn al-Qayyim, Ighathat al-Lahfan 1/377: al-ma'ruf waqfuhu (known as Qatada's own words); also narrated as the Prophet's
• Grading: al-Diya' al-Maqdisi, al-Ahadith al-Mukhtara 11/185 (the version from Ibn Abbas attributed to the Prophet): la a'rifuhu illa bi-hadha al-isnad (I know it only through this chain)

"Uthman b. Affan used to order the killing of dogs and pigeons."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19733 (the Jami' of Ma'mar, chapter "Dogs and pigeons"), al-Hasan al-Basri reports that the caliph Uthman used to order the killing of dogs and pigeons. This is Uthman's order, not the Prophet's. A fuller version from al-Hasan, "I witnessed Uthman ordering in his sermon the killing of dogs and the slaughter of pigeons", is graded isnaduhu sahih by Ahmad Shakir and hasan by al-Haythami, who adds that the narrator Mubarak b. Fadala conceals his sources (mudallis); on the same dorar page al-Arna'ut grades it weak and al-Dhahabi says there is weakness in its chain. Those gradings are for the fuller wording, which has "slaughter" of pigeons, not for Abd al-Razzaq's line.

Why this is a problem

The Prophet's order to kill dogs is canonical (Muslim 1570a), and so is his remark on seeing a man chasing a pigeon: "a devil following a she-devil" (Abu Dawud 4940). Uthman's policy carried the hostility further: as caliph he ordered the killing of the birds themselves, and in the fuller version announced it from the pulpit.

A ruler's campaign against the town's dogs and pigeons, delivered as part of a sermon, shows how prophetic dislikes turned into state policy against animals that had done nothing.

The Muslim response

Commentators explain the order as a measure against pigeon-flying as a pastime and the gambling attached to it in Medina, and say that Uthman was following the Prophet's own order to kill dogs. The fuller version speaks of the pigeons being "slaughtered" (dhabh), not simply killed.

Why it fails

That is a reasonable explanation, and the entry is rated basic. But the explanation concedes the method: a social problem among people was dealt with by killing the animals, as the dog problem had been. Abd al-Razzaq's line says "killing", not slaughter, and gives no reason. The gradings of the fuller report are also divided, from sound (Shakir) to weak (al-Arna'ut), so neither the order nor its explanation is as firmly established as the response implies.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19733, Jami' of Ma'mar in ed. al-A'zami, vol. 11 p. 3
• dorar.net cards for al-Hasan's fuller version (Ahmad Shakir 1/255; al-Haythami, Majma' al-Zawa'id 4/45; al-Arna'ut, Takhrij al-Musnad 521; al-Dhahabi, Siyar 10/317)
• Sahih Muslim 1570a
• Sunan Abi Dawud 4940
• Grading: Ahmad Shakir, Takhrij al-Musnad 1/255 (fuller version: 'I witnessed Uthman ordering in his sermon...'): isnaduhu sahih (sound chain)
• Grading: al-Haythami, Majma' al-Zawa'id 4/45 (fuller version): isnaduhu hasan, illa anna Mubarak b. Fadala mudallis (good chain, except that Mubarak b. Fadala conceals his sources)

"He saw clean skin, and he raised the whip over him and said: The skin of a disbeliever?"

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19995 (the Jami' of Ma'mar, chapter "Luxury and fatness"), the Successor Tawus says that Umar saw Yazid b. Abi Sufyan with his belly uncovered and saw clean, unblemished skin. He raised his whip (dirra) over him and said: "The skin of a disbeliever?" He was told that Syria is a land of easy living, and he fell silent. This is Umar's act, not a saying of the Prophet. Tawus did not meet Umar (as al-Arna'ut notes of another Tawus report about Umar), so the chain is broken. No grading of this report by a named critic was found, and the al-A'zami edition prints none.

Why this is a problem

The report does not say Umar struck Yazid, and the entry does not claim it. What it shows is the reflex: smooth, well-kept skin on a Muslim commander was enough for the caliph to raise his whip, and the insult he reached for was "the skin of a disbeliever". Soft living is coded as a mark of unbelief, so that a Muslim who looks comfortable looks like a kafir.

The reproach is aimed at Yazid for nothing he had done except to look well, and Umar fell silent only when told that Syria is a land of easy living.

The Muslim response

Muslims cite reports like this as examples of Umar's austerity and his fear that wealth would corrupt the governors of the conquered lands. He did not strike Yazid; he accepted the explanation and fell silent. The chain is broken in any case.

Why it fails

That is a fair reading, and the entry is rated basic. Its interest is the language. The caliph's warning against luxury was expressed as a contrast between believers' skin and disbelievers' skin, and the whip was the first response. The report was kept by Ma'mar and Abd al-Razzaq under the heading "Luxury and fatness".

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19995, Jami' of Ma'mar in ed. al-A'zami, vol. 11 p. 86
• dorar.net card: al-Arna'ut, Takhrij Sharh al-Sunna 14/211 ('Tawus did not meet Umar', on another report)

"Their testimony is not permitted in that. ... The testimony of women is not permitted in a hadd, nor in marriage, nor in divorce."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13373, al-Zuhri and Qatada are asked about a man against whom six women and one man testified to an act of zina. Their answer: the women's testimony is not accepted in that, and women's testimony is not accepted in a hadd penalty, in marriage or in divorce. In 15402 al-Hasan and al-Zuhri say the same, adding "even if a man is with them". In 13372 an authority whom the narrator thinks was Ibn Tawus accepts women's testimony alongside men in everything except zina, "because they should not look at that", while "the man should look at it until he knows it". These are rulings of Successors, not of the Prophet, and the chapters also record wider views (below). No grading of these reports was found. A related claim by al-Zuhri that "the sunna passed" against women's testimony in hudud is graded weak by al-Albani and al-Shawkani; that is a different report.

Why this is a problem

Six women and one man, seven witnesses, are not enough, because six of them are women. In the strictest form of the rule, women cannot testify in criminal penalties, marriage or divorce at all, even when a man testifies with them. In marriage and divorce, the areas of law that most shape a woman's life, her word as a witness does not count.

The Qur'an already counts two women as one man in commercial witness (Q 2:282), and the Prophet explains this rule as "the deficiency in her intelligence" (Bukhari 304). Some Successors went further and removed women from whole areas of law. The rationale offered in 13372, that women should not look at sexual acts while men should look "until they know", shows that the exclusion rests on ideas of female modesty, not on what the women actually saw.

The Muslim response

These are opinions, and the same chapters disagree. Ata accepts women's testimony with men in everything, and two women with three men in a case of zina (15414); Umar is reported accepting one man with women in a marriage (15416). Penalties are averted by doubt, so caution in hudud cases is a protection for the accused, not a judgement on women's worth.

Why it fails

The disagreement is real, and it is to the credit of the Musannaf that it records it. But even Ata's lenient view counts two women in place of one man, and the view that excluded women from hadd, marriage and divorce was held by al-Zuhri, Qatada and al-Hasan, three of the most influential jurists of their generation. "Caution" explains why a criminal court might want strong evidence; it does not explain why six eyewitnesses are worth nothing because they are women, or why women's testimony should be barred from marriage and divorce, where no penalty is at stake.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13373, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 332
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 15402, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 8 p. 329
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13372, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 7 p. 332
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 15414, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 8 p. 331
• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 15416, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 8 p. 331
• Sahih al-Bukhari 304
• Grading: al-Albani, Irwa' al-Ghalil 8/295 (al-Zuhri's 'the sunna passed' report, a different text): weak: mu'dal (two or more links missing), and al-Hajjaj b. Abi Shayba is in its chain
• Grading: al-Shawkani, Nayl al-Awtar 7/183 (same related report): mursal, la taqumu bi-mithlihi al-hujja (broken at the top; not a proof)

"Umar struck him with the whip until he made him cry. Hafsa said to him: He was not being indecent; why did you strike him? He said: I saw that he was pleased with himself, so I wanted to make it small to him."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19548 (the Jami' of Ma'mar, chapter "Pride"), Ikrima b. Khalid says that a son of Umar came in to him having combed his hair and put on fine clothes. Umar struck him with the whip until he cried. His daughter Hafsa, the Prophet's widow, objected that he had done nothing indecent, and Umar gave the answer quoted above: he wanted to make his son's self small in his own eyes. The son is not named. This is Umar's act, not a saying of the Prophet. Ikrima b. Khalid, a Successor who narrates from Umar's son Ibn Umar, is not known to have met Umar, so the report is broken; that is our observation, as no named critic's grading was found and the al-A'zami edition prints none.

Why this is a problem

The son had done nothing wrong: he had combed his hair and dressed well, and even Hafsa protested that it was not indecent. Umar beat his son until he wept, not for an act but for an attitude Umar thought he saw. The stated aim was to humble him.

The report is preserved under the heading of pride as a lesson. It presents the second caliph's beating of his son for looking pleased with himself as a model of guarding the soul against arrogance.

The Muslim response

The chain is broken, and the report is not a legal ruling. Muslims who cite it present it as Umar's personal discipline of his own household against vanity, which Islam condemns. Hafsa's objection is in the text, so the report itself records that the beating was questioned.

Why it fails

The response is right that it proves nothing about law, and the entry is rated basic. But it was kept as an example, not as a warning. Hafsa's objection is answered, and the answer is allowed to stand as the last word. The point of including it in a chapter on pride is that Umar was right.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 19548, Jami' of Ma'mar in ed. al-A'zami, vol. 10 p. 416

"I found her standing naked, with nothing on her but that rag, and that piece of fat in her hand ... saying: Oh, my thirst! ... Whoever gave her water, may Allah wither his hand. ... I woke, and my hand was withered."

What the hadith says

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20768 (the Jami' of Ma'mar), Ma'mar says "a shaykh of ours" told him that a woman came to one of the Prophet's wives and asked her to pray that Allah free her hand. She explained: her father had been rich and generous, but she had never seen her mother give anything in charity, except that once, when they slaughtered a cow, she gave a poor man a piece of fat and clothed him in a rag. After both parents died, she saw in a dream her father at a river giving people water; he did not know her mother had died. She found her mother standing naked except for that rag, with that piece of fat in her hand, striking it on her other hand, sucking at it and crying "Oh, my thirst!" The daughter gave her water from a vessel of her father's; someone standing there (the print has a gap at this point) said "Whoever gave her water, may Allah wither his hand", and she woke with her hand withered. The source is an unnamed shaykh and the Prophet's wife is not named, so the report has no usable chain; that is our observation, as no grading was found.

Why this is a problem

The story pictures the afterlife punishment of a woman for meanness: she is left naked and thirsty, holding only the two things she ever gave away. When her daughter does what any child would do and gives her water, the act of mercy is answered with a curse, and the daughter wakes up maimed. Compassion for a punished parent is itself punished.

The story was placed in Ma'mar's Jami' and so in Abd al-Razzaq's Musannaf, in the chapter on the ways of earlier peoples, and it is set in the house of one of the Prophet's wives. It shows the kind of edifying horror story that circulated in the early community about charity and the dead.

The Muslim response

No Muslim response to this report was found. It is a dream story from an anonymous source, not a hadith, and nothing in Islamic belief rests on it. The story's message, that charity matters, is uncontroversial.

Why it fails

The response is right, and the entry is rated basic. Its only value is as evidence of what circulated and was recorded. One of the earliest hadith collections preserved, from an unnamed source, a story in which a daughter's mercy to her dead mother is punished by a withered hand, and attached it to the household of the Prophet.

Check it yourself

• Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 20768, Jami' of Ma'mar in ed. al-A'zami, vol. 11 pp. 370-371