al-Bayhaqi

al-Bayhaqi (d. AD 1066): al-Sunan al-Kubra, a large collection arranged by legal topic that also records many rulings of the Companions, and Shu'ab al-Iman. Not one of the six canonical books. Many reports here are graded weak; each entry names its grading and links the printed edition so you can check it.

← Back to all sources
0 / 0 entries
Category
Strength
Umar's qa'if says two men share one child; the boy picks his father Science Strange / Obscure Governance Women Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 21263
"The qa'if said, 'They have both shared in him.' ... Umar said to the boy, 'Attach yourself to whichever of them you wish.'"

What the hadith says

This is a report about the caliph Umar b. al-Khattab, not a saying of the Prophet. In his chapter on qa'ifs (experts who judged lineage from physical resemblance) and disputed paternity, al-Bayhaqi relates that Umar used to attach children born before Islam to whoever claimed them. Two men each claimed one woman's son. Umar called a qa'if, who looked at them and said, "They have both shared in him." Umar struck him with his whip and questioned the woman, who said both men had slept with her and she did not know which was the father. The qa'if cried "Allahu akbar", and Umar told the boy to attach himself to whichever man he wished. This wording (al-Bayhaqi 21263, the same as the Muwatta) comes through Sulayman b. Yasar, who never met Umar; al-Albani says its men are trustworthy "but it is munqati'" (broken). al-Bayhaqi also gives a connected route in which Umar tells a man who did not know which of two claimants was his father, "Follow whichever of them you wish," and calls it "a sound, connected chain". On the strength of such routes al-Albani grades the report sahih in Irwa' al-Ghalil 1578.

Why this is a problem

The court of the second caliph did not dismiss a verdict that one child had two fathers. It settled the case by letting the child choose. The sound strands go further. In the report of Abu al-Muhallab, which al-Albani says al-Tahawi records "with a sound chain", four qa'ifs separately agree that the boy belongs to both men, and Umar exclaims: "I knew that a bitch can be impregnated by several dogs, but I did not realise women did that before now! I will not reject what they see. Go, they are both your fathers." In a version through Ibn Umar, also graded sound by al-Albani, Umar "made him between the two of them". In al-Bayhaqi's report from Sa'id b. al-Musayyib, Umar assigned the child to both men, "they inherit from him and he inherits from them".

A child has one biological father. The ruling treated resemblance-reading as evidence of a shared conception, compared women to dogs to explain it, and turned the result into law on lineage and inheritance. This is not a stray anecdote: it sits in the Muwatta and al-Bayhaqi's Sunan, and a leading modern hadith critic accepts its substance.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the famous "choose a father" wording has a broken chain, as al-Albani himself says. These were children of pre-Islamic unions, conceived under customs Islam abolished, and Umar was tidying up claims of lineage that could not otherwise be resolved. Assigning a child to two claimants, or letting him choose, was a legal settlement of competing claims, not a statement about biology.

Why it fails

The chain objection removes only one route. al-Bayhaqi calls the Hisham b. Urwa route sound and connected, and al-Albani grades the Abu al-Muhallab and Ibn Umar witnesses sound. The "legal settlement" reading fails against Umar's own words in the sound version: he presents the dog comparison as a fact about reproduction he had just learned ("I did not realise women did that") and defers to the qa'ifs' judgment ("I will not reject what they see").

The pre-Islamic setting explains why the case arose, not how it was decided. A caliph whose rulings are treated as precedent accepted a physical impossibility on the word of resemblance experts and gave a child two fathers, with inheritance in both directions.

Check it yourself

A man abducted by the jinn; Umar asks what he ate and lets him reclaim his wife Strange / Obscure Magic & Occult Governance Women Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 15570
"I went out to pray the 'isha and the jinn took me captive. I stayed among them a long time. Then believing jinn (or he said: Muslim jinn) raided them, fought them and defeated them, and took captives from them, and I was among those they captured."

What the hadith says

This is a report about the caliph Umar, told by the Successor Abd al-Rahman b. Abi Layla, not a saying of the Prophet. A man of the Ansar went out to the evening prayer and vanished. His wife went to Umar, who told her to wait four years and then let her remarry. The husband came back and disputed it before Umar, explaining that the jinn had captured him, that Muslim jinn defeated his captors and freed him ("it is not lawful for us to keep you captive"), and that they escorted him home: by night they did not speak to him, by day there was a whirlwind he followed. Umar asked what he ate among them ("beans, and whatever Allah's name was not mentioned over") and what he drank (al-jadaf, which Qatada explains as drink left uncovered), then gave him the choice between taking back the dower and taking back his wife. al-Albani grades the chain through Qatada and al-Jurayri sahih (Irwa' 1709) and the Matar route weak. Abd al-Razzaq has a version with an unnamed narrator in its chain.

Why this is a problem

The second caliph's court heard a story of a war between believing and unbelieving jinn, complete with captives and a ruling on the lawfulness of enslaving a Muslim, and recorded no challenge to it. Umar's follow-up questions were about the man's diet among the jinn, not about where he had actually been. The case then decided a real marriage: a woman who had waited four years and remarried could be reclaimed by a husband whose only explanation for his absence was abduction by spirits.

This is not a fringe text that Muslims have discarded. Its chain is graded sound, and a widely used fatwa site cites it today, with al-Albani's grading, as proof that the jinn can kidnap a human being. A legal tradition that admits unverifiable supernatural testimony in family law cannot protect the people that law governs.

The Muslim response

Muslims reply that there is nothing incoherent here. The Qur'an affirms that jinn exist and that some of them are Muslims (Surat al-Jinn), so a rare abduction is possible, as Ibn Jibrin says in IslamQA 7871. Umar's real concern was legal: he fixed a waiting period for the wife of a missing man and then dealt fairly with a husband who returned.

Why it fails

The appeal to the Qur'an shows that the belief behind the story is mainstream, which is the point. The only evidence for the abduction is the absent man's own account, and it conveniently excused years away from his family. Umar did not test it; he asked what the jinn fed him.

Fairness to the husband also came at the wife's expense. She did what the caliph told her to do, and her second marriage was then left open to cancellation at the choice of a husband whose only excuse was a ghost story. (In Thabit's shorter version, which al-Bayhaqi cites on the same page, he chose the dower.) The grading only makes this worse: the tradition preserved the account through sound chains and still presents it as history.

Check it yourself

Ibn Umar handled slave-girls' breasts and buttocks before buying them Slavery & Captives Women Sexual Issues Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 10789
"When he bought a slave-girl, he would uncover her leg and put his hand between her breasts and on her buttocks."

What the hadith says

This is a report about the Companion Abdullah b. Umar, son of the caliph Umar, transmitted by his client Nafi'. It is not a saying of the Prophet. al-Bayhaqi places it in a chapter on a man who wants to buy a slave-girl looking at what is not 'awra (the part that must be covered) of her. After the report the text adds: "It seems he would place it on them from behind the garment." al-Albani says that remark is "perhaps from al-Bayhaqi or one of his narrators": it is not part of Nafi''s report. Other versions are as explicit. In Ibn Abi Shayba, Ibn Umar "would put his hand on her buttocks and between her thighs, and sometimes uncovered her calves". In Abd al-Razzaq, once the price was agreed, "he put his hand on her buttocks and looked at her legs and her front", where the transmitted gloss explains "front" (qubul) as "her belly". al-Albani grades the report sahih (Irwa' 1792); al-Shathri grades Ibn Abi Shayba's version sahih.

Why this is a problem

One of the most respected Companions handled women in the slave market the way a buyer checks livestock: breasts, buttocks, between the thighs, calves uncovered. The women had no say. Nothing in the reports treats this as a lapse. They are collected under legal headings as precedent for what a buyer may look at and touch.

The law that grew from this made a woman's bodily privacy depend on her legal status. A slave-woman's 'awra was set closer to a man's, so a stranger negotiating her price could do to her what he could never do to a free woman. A modern authority, al-Albani, grades these reports sound in a work collecting evidence for legal rulings. This is the tradition's settled picture, not one man's private habit.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars explain that in classical law the 'awra of a slave-woman was lighter than a free woman's because of her work and social position (SeekersGuidance). A buyer had a legitimate need to examine what he was paying for, and the report itself says Ibn Umar did it over her clothing.

Why it fails

The "over her clothing" line is the weakest part of the defence. al-Albani says it was probably added by al-Bayhaqi or a later narrator, and the other sound versions have no such qualification: they have him uncovering her legs and looking at her front. Even over cloth, a hand between a woman's breasts and thighs is intimate touching.

The "legitimate need" argument concedes the main point. It treats the woman as goods to be examined. The lighter 'awra rule is not an answer to the problem; it is the problem, written into law.

Check it yourself

Looking at a wife's or slave-girl's private part during sex causes blindness Sexual Issues Women Slavery & Captives Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 13540
"None of you should look at the private part of his wife, or of his slave-girl, when he has intercourse with her, for that causes blindness."

What the hadith says

al-Bayhaqi records this as a saying of the Prophet, through Baqiyya b. al-Walid from Ibn Jurayj from Ata from Ibn Abbas. He immediately quotes the critic Ibn Adi: "it seems that between Baqiyya and Ibn Jurayj there is some unknown or weak narrator", although in another route (13541) Baqiyya says "Ibn Jurayj narrated to me". The verdict of the critics is overwhelmingly negative. Abu Hatim al-Razi called it and two related reports "fabricated, without basis", Ibn al-Jawzi listed it as fabricated, and al-Albani grades it mawdu' (fabricated) in al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 195. The lone dissent is Ibn al-Salah, who called its chain "good" (as quoted by Ibn Hajar through al-Suyuti); al-Albani says he was misled by the apparent "narrated to me".

Why this is a problem

The report puts a piece of folk medicine in the Prophet's mouth: a particular sexual act is said to cause blindness. It also assumes, without comment, that a man has sexual access to two kinds of women, his wife and his slave-girl. It was not hidden away. It was carried in one of the major Sunan collections, and a celebrated hadith master judged its chain good.

That shows how the authentication system worked in practice. A transmitter known for hiding weak links (Baqiyya) could make a medical myth look acceptable to an expert like Ibn al-Salah. The "slave-girl" clause also shows what forgers and transmitters took for granted: that a slave-woman's body was available to her owner in the same way as a wife's.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the hadith is fabricated, and that the critics themselves exposed it: Abu Hatim, Ibn Hibban's judgement of Baqiyya, Ibn al-Jawzi and al-Albani all reject it. The hadith scholars declared it unreliable (HadithAnswers). Nothing in Islam rests on it.

Why it fails

On authenticity the response is right, and the entry does not claim otherwise. The argument is about the tradition. The forgery circulated in the Prophet's name long enough to reach al-Bayhaqi's Sunan, where it is recorded with Ibn Adi's doubt but no verdict of its own, and at least one leading master of hadith science judged its chain good.

Its weakness does not touch the assumption it carries. The rejected report and the accepted law agree that the slave-girl is a lawful sexual partner. The critics objected to its chain, not to the setting.

Check it yourself

'The sons of the rich are a greater temptation than virgins' LGBTQ / Gender Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 5014
"Do not sit with the sons of the rich, for they have faces like the faces of women, and they are a greater temptation than virgins."

What the hadith says

This is a saying of the Successor al-Hasan b. Dhakwan, not of the Prophet. al-Bayhaqi records it in Shu'ab al-Iman in the chapter on the prohibition of unlawful sex and the duty of chastity, through Ibn Abi al-Dunya, who also has it in Dhamm al-Malahi with the same chain. The report just before it on the same page quotes another Successor: "I do not fear more for the devout young man from a ravenous beast than from a beardless boy who comes to sit with him." The editor of the Shu'ab grades the chain weak because of Ibrahim b. Harasa, whom al-Bukhari says the critics abandoned and Abu Hatim calls "weak, abandoned in hadith". A similar saying was also attributed to the Prophet ("Do not fill your eyes with the sons of the rich..."), but Ibn al-Qattan says a narrator in it was a forger and "it is not sound at all".

Why this is a problem

The saying treats beardless youths as a sexual danger to grown men, greater than unmarried girls, and gives as the reason that their faces look like women's. It is filed under chastity as practical advice to the pious. The neighbouring report, a ravenous beast versus a beardless boy, shows this was not a single eccentric remark but a theme the compilers gathered.

The tradition that condemns same-sex desire in the harshest terms also assumed that pious men would feel it for adolescent boys, and its answer was to keep away from the boys. Someone later thought the idea worth attributing to the Prophet himself.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this is a Successor's moral advice, not revelation, and its chain is weak. Islam forbids looking with desire at anyone unlawful, and this saying simply warns against a known temptation. The version attributed to the Prophet is fabricated, and the critics said so.

Why it fails

The response is right that this binds no one, and the entry does not claim the Prophet said it. The point is what the tradition preserved and passed on: Ibn Abi al-Dunya collected it, al-Bayhaqi included it in his work on the branches of faith, and the editor notes that al-Suyuti later relayed it as well.

Calling it "a known temptation" concedes the observation. The literature of piety assumed that devout men would desire boys, and it handled this by avoiding the boys, not by questioning the culture that produced the desire. The forged Prophetic version shows how readily such counsel moved up the chain of authority.

Check it yourself

Umar's slave-women served male guests bare-headed Slavery & Captives Women Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 3222
"Umar's slave-women used to serve us with their hair uncovered, [their hair] striking their breasts."

What the hadith says

The Companion Anas b. Malik recalls how the caliph Umar's household was run. This is not a saying of the Prophet. al-Bayhaqi records it in his chapter on the 'awra (the part that must be covered) of the slave-woman and comments: "The reports from Umar on this are sound, and they show that her head, her neck and what shows of her while she works are not 'awra." The last phrase is ambiguous in the Arabic: read one way, the women's uncovered hair fell onto their breasts; read another, as the printed edition vowels it, their breasts were swinging. al-Albani calls the chain jayyid (good) in Irwa' 6/204. The report just before it has Umar rebuking his daughter Hafsa for dressing a slave-girl in a head-covering and cloak: "Do not make slave-women look like free women". A more explicit version, "breasts jiggling and ankles showing", has a narrator accused of lying in its chain.

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an's covering verses are presented today as rules of modesty for women. In the caliph's own house they worked as a mark of class. Slave-women served men bare-headed, and al-Bayhaqi states as law that a slave-woman's head, neck and whatever shows while she works are not 'awra. When a slave-girl was dressed in a head-covering and cloak, Umar rebuked the woman who had dressed her: slave-women must not look like free women.

A leading modern fatwa site defends the rule by saying, among other reasons, that "people do not usually find them attractive". If covering protects women, the women least able to refuse unwanted attention were the ones left without it.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer, as in IslamQA 198645, that slave-women did heavy manual work, so full covering would have been a hardship. The best-known wording means only that their hair reached their breasts; the "jiggling" version comes through a narrator accused of lying. The concession applied only where there was no risk of temptation, and if there was, slave-women had to cover too.

Why it fails

The argument does not rest on the disputed phrase. That Umar's slave-women served male guests with uncovered heads is graded good, and al-Bayhaqi's ruling uses it as evidence. The hardship argument explains why the rule was convenient, not why modesty should depend on whether a woman is owned. Free women also worked.

IslamQA's further suggestion that the women were old is something it offers "if we were to assume" the other wording is sound; it is not in the report. The "no temptation" condition admits the real logic: covering marked which women were protected, and the slave-woman was not among them.

Check it yourself

Abu Bakr orders a man burned for being 'taken as a woman is taken', on Ali's advice LGBTQ / Gender Hudud Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 17028
"Ali said: This is a sin that no nation committed except one, and Allah did to it what you know. We think he should be burned with fire ... So Abu Bakr wrote to Khalid b. al-Walid ordering him to burn him with fire."

What the hadith says

This is a report about the caliph Abu Bakr and Ali, not a saying of the Prophet. Khalid b. al-Walid wrote to Abu Bakr that he had found a man in one of the Arab regions "who is taken (yunkahu) as a woman is taken". Abu Bakr gathered the Prophet's Companions, Ali spoke most severely and proposed burning, "the opinion of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah agreed that he be burned", and Abu Bakr wrote ordering it. al-Bayhaqi tells it through Muhammad b. al-Munkadir from Safwan b. Sulaym and says plainly: "this is mursal": the Successors who tell it were not present. In Shu'ab al-Iman 5005 the same story comes through Ibn al-Munkadir alone, followed by "it is said that Ibn al-Zubayr and Hisham b. Abd al-Malik also burned [such men]". The Shu'ab editor grades its chain sound as far as Ibn al-Munkadir, and quotes al-Mundhiri: "with a good chain from Muhammad b. al-Munkadir".

Why this is a problem

The report presents burning a man alive as the agreed decision of the Prophet's Companions under the first caliph, proposed by Ali, whom Sunnis and Shi'is both revere. It is not treated as a curiosity. The Shu'ab editor's footnote quotes al-Mundhiri's list: "Four of the caliphs burned lutis with fire: Abu Bakr, Ali, Abd Allah b. al-Zubayr and Hisham b. Abd al-Malik." IslamQA 38622 cites the story as the view of Abu Bakr and Ali.

It also contradicts the canonical record. In Bukhari 3017 Ali burns some people and Ibn Abbas objects that the Prophet said, "Do not punish with Allah's punishment." Either the Companions' consensus in this report ignored a Prophetic ban, or the ban did not stop the most senior Companions from using fire.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is mursal, as al-Bayhaqi says, so it cannot establish what Abu Bakr did. Most of the early authorities held stoning rather than burning; the Companions' agreement that the act is punishable by death rests on other reports, and they differed only on the method (IslamQA 38622). Bukhari 3017 shows that the Prophet's ban on punishment by fire was known and enforced by other Companions.

Why it fails

The break in the chain is real, but the report is not a weak fabrication. Its narrators are sound up to Ibn al-Munkadir, a respected Successor of Medina, and al-Mundhiri called that chain good. Mainstream fiqh still cites it as the position of Abu Bakr and Ali, as the IslamQA answer does.

The "minority view" defence gives up the method and keeps the killing: the same answer says the Companions agreed the man must die. Bukhari 3017 does not help either. It confirms that Ali, the man who proposes burning here, did burn people, and that only Ibn Abbas's appeal to the Prophet's words objected.

Check it yourself

Imam Malik's four-year pregnancies: 'the woman pregnant with an elephant' Science Women Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 15553
"Glory be to Allah! Who says this? Here is our neighbour, the wife of Muhammad b. Ajlan, a truthful woman whose husband is a truthful man. She had three pregnancies in twelve years, carrying each pregnancy for four years."

What the hadith says

These are reports from early jurists, not sayings of the Prophet. In his chapter "What has come about the longest pregnancy", al-Bayhaqi first gives A'isha's saying that a woman's pregnancy does not exceed two years. al-Walid b. Muslim reports that when he told Malik b. Anas, founder of the Maliki school, of that saying, Malik answered with the case of his neighbour (15553). al-Mubarak b. Mujahid adds that the woman was well known for this, and "she was called 'the one pregnant with an elephant'" (15554). al-Waqidi heard Malik say, "Pregnancy may last years, and I know one whose mother carried him more than two years", meaning himself (15555), and elsewhere reports that Malik's mother carried him for three years (15556). al-Daraqutni records the same reports (3877-3878). No named critic's grading of these reports was located.

Why this is a problem

Human pregnancy lasts about nine months. Here the founder of one of the four Sunni schools rejected even a two-year limit on the strength of a neighbour's reputation and a family story about his own birth. This was not idle talk. According to Islamweb, the Shafi'i and Hanbali schools and one opinion of the Maliki school set the maximum length of pregnancy at four years, and the Hanafis at two.

A legal maximum decides whether a child born after a divorce or a husband's death belongs to the former husband. Rules on paternity, inheritance and the waiting period were therefore built on something biologically impossible, reasoned out by the most respected jurists of their time from anecdote. A'isha's "two years", the stricter limit, is just as wrong.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that no verse of the Qur'an and no authentic hadith of the Prophet fixes a maximum length of pregnancy. These limits were the jurists' own reasoning (ijtihad) from the reports available to them, and such reasoning can be corrected. Modern Muslim legal systems can rely on medical knowledge instead.

Why it fails

The response is partly right: this is not revelation. But it shows the weakness of the method that produced Islamic law. The schools present their rulings as the best human understanding of a divine law, built by the most careful scholars of the early centuries, and here the same method that relies on trustworthy narrators turned "a truthful woman with a truthful husband" into evidence about human biology.

The rule was also not quickly corrected. It stood as the position of the Shafi'i and Hanbali schools, and of one view in the Maliki school, for centuries, and Islamweb still states it as their position. A legal system that could not tell a nine-month pregnancy from a four-year one for so long cannot claim that its rulings track reality.

Check it yourself

Three Companions testify that they saw al-Mughira in the act; Umar flogs the witnesses Hudud Sexual Issues Governance Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 17043
"They testified against al-Mughira b. Shu'ba that they saw him putting it in and taking it out ... Ziyad said: I did not see what these men said, but I saw something suspicious and heard loud breathing. So Umar flogged them and let Ziyad go."

What the hadith says

This is a report about the caliph Umar's court, not a saying of the Prophet. In the chapter "Witnesses to zina when they do not make up four", the Successor Qatada, who was not present, reports (17043) that Abu Bakra, Nafi' b. al-Harith and Shibl b. Ma'bad testified that they had seen al-Mughira b. Shu'ba, then one of Umar's governors, having intercourse with a woman; Abu Bakra added that he could almost see a smallpox mark on her thigh. Seeing the fourth man, Ziyad, Umar said: "I see a clever young man who will say only the truth." Ziyad then gave the answer quoted above. Al-Bayhaqi adds Ali b. Zayd's version, in which Ziyad says, "I do not know whether he had intercourse with her or not." In Qasama b. Zuhayr's version (17042), Ziyad says, "As for zina, I do not testify to it, but I saw an ugly thing," Umar has the three flogged, and when Abu Bakra repeats, "I testify that he is an adulterer," and Umar moves to flog him again, Ali says: "If you flog him, then stone your companion." A third version comes through Abu Bakra's son (17044). Al-Albani graded the Qasama version isnaduhu sahih (sound chain) (Irwa' al-Ghalil 8/29). The six canonical books do not carry the testimony.

Why this is a problem

The outcome under the Quran's rule (Q 24:4) was not that al-Mughira was convicted. It was that three Companions who swore to the act in explicit terms each received the slanderer's punishment. The fourth witness did not contradict them. He saw "something suspicious", "an ugly thing", heard "loud breathing", and did not know "whether he had intercourse with her or not". That was enough to send the accusers to the lash and leave the governor untouched. The rule judged how many witnesses used the decisive word, not what had happened.

Nor was the judge neutral. Reading Umar's praise of Ziyad as a hint is an inference, but another version on the same dorar page, which al-Albani also grades isnaduhu sahih (Irwa' 8/28), records Umar's colour changing with each witness and his words when the fourth failed: "Praise be to Allah who did not let Satan gloat over the community of Muhammad." The relief was for the accused. Ali's argument closed the last door: if Abu Bakra's repeated oath counted as new testimony, the governor would have to be stoned. Abu Bakra is the Companion who narrates "Never will a people succeed who make a woman their ruler" (Bukhari 4425); Sunni scholarship has had to argue that his flogging for slander does not touch his reports.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Umar simply applied the Quran: an accusation of zina without four witnesses is punished, because the law protects reputations. IslamQA adds that being punished for incomplete testimony does not make a witness a liar. It suggests Abu Bakra may have seen al-Mughira's own wife and mistaken her for a well-known woman of Basra, and quotes Ibn Hazm that he may have been confused, "so neither he nor al-Mughira sinned". Abu Bakra's reliability is unaffected, and the scholars agreed to accept his reports.

Why it fails

The mistaken-identity defence is not in any of these reports. None of them names the woman or says she was al-Mughira's wife; Ziyad does not say so; and Ali's intervention treats the case purely as a matter of counting testimonies. Nobody in the reports asks who the woman was. The court settled the matter by arithmetic, and the arithmetic favoured the powerful man.

The defence also has a cost either way. If the three were honest, the law flogged honest eyewitnesses and protected the man they saw. If they were lying, a narrator of Sahih al-Bukhari was a slanderer who, as IslamQA itself reports, refused to retract. IslamQA chooses the first, and with it a law that punished the witnesses for what they saw.

Check it yourself

Uthman orders a woman stoned for giving birth at six months; Ali objects, but 'she was found already stoned' Hudud Women Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 15551
"Uthman b. Affan was brought a woman who had given birth in six months, and he ordered that she be stoned ... Uthman ordered that she be brought back, and she was found already stoned."

What the hadith says

This is a report about the caliph Uthman and Ali, not a saying of the Prophet. In the chapter "What has come about the shortest pregnancy", al-Bayhaqi gives it (15551) from Malik b. Anas, who says only that "it reached him" (a balagh, with no chain to the event). A woman who had given birth six months [after her marriage] is brought to Uthman, who orders her stoned. Ali objects: "That is not [due] against her," and combines three verses: "his bearing and weaning are thirty months" (Q 46:15), "his weaning is in two years" (Q 31:14) and "mothers nurse their children two full years" (Q 2:233), so nursing takes twenty-four months and pregnancy six. Uthman orders her brought back, "and she was found already stoned". Al-Bayhaqi repeats the short form (16961) in the chapter on the ruler not attending a stoning, right after al-Shafi'i's remark that "Uthman ordered the stoning of a woman, and she was stoned and he did not attend her". Al-Bayhaqi gives no verdict. A fuller version from Ba'ja b. Abd Allah al-Juhani, which Ibn Hajar grades mawquf sahih (Muwafaqat al-Khubr al-Khabar 2/214), also ends with Uthman ordering her return too late: "they found that she had already been finished with".

Why this is a problem

The third rightly guided caliph sent a woman to her death because her child arrived six months after the wedding. No witnesses and no confession are mentioned; the birth date was the evidence. The defence that saved her in law, if not in life, came from three verses any reader of the Quran could have put together, and in Ba'ja's version Uthman admits, "By Allah, I did not perceive this." In that version the woman tells her weeping sister that no one had touched her but her husband, and the husband later recognises the child as his own. The sentence had been carried out before the correction arrived.

The jurists drew two lessons from the case. One was Ali's six-month minimum for pregnancy. The other, in al-Shafi'i's use of it, was procedural: that a ruler need not attend the stonings he orders. Neither lesson concerned the woman who died.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the story shows the Companions correcting one another from the Quran: Uthman accepted Ali's argument at once, and Ali's reasoning became the settled rule that a child born six months after marriage is legitimate, a rule that protects women. Malik's report has no chain, so its ending, that she had already been stoned, cannot be relied on.

Why it fails

Malik's version is indeed chainless. But the ending does not rest on Malik alone. Ba'ja's version, the one Ibn Hajar grades sound as the words of Companions, has Uthman order her stoning and send for her too late, in different words: she "had already been finished with". Al-Bayhaqi did not question the story either; he filed it twice, once as evidence for the minimum length of pregnancy and once as precedent for stoning in the ruler's absence.

The six-month rule is a real protection, but here it arrives as a correction after an execution, not before one. A system that could kill a married woman on an arithmetical suspicion, and record the error as a legal precedent, is the problem the story shows.

Check it yourself

Umar consults on stoning a pregnant wife; Mu'adh stops him, and the boy is born with teeth Hudud Women Science Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 15558
"Umar consulted people about stoning her. Mu'adh b. Jabal said: Commander of the Faithful, if you have a way against her, you have no way against what is in her womb, so leave her until she gives birth ... She gave birth to a boy whose front teeth had already come through."

What the hadith says

This is a report about the caliph Umar, not a saying of the Prophet. In the chapter "What has come about the longest pregnancy", al-Bayhaqi gives it (15558) through al-A'mash from Abu Sufyan, who says only that "elders of ours" told him. A man tells Umar that he was away from his wife for two years and came back to find her pregnant. Umar consults people about stoning her, and Mu'adh b. Jabal gives the answer quoted above. She bears a boy with his front teeth already through; the husband sees the likeness and says, "My son, by the Lord of the Ka'ba." Umar says: "Women are unable to bear the like of Mu'adh. But for Mu'adh, Umar would have perished." Al-Bayhaqi comments: "This, if it is established, shows that a pregnancy can last more than two years," and suggests that Umar's ruling that the wife of a missing man waits four years may rest on pregnancy lasting four years. No critic's grading was found, and no second source for the report was located.

Why this is a problem

Mu'adh's objection is not that the evidence is lacking. He does not say that a two-year absence proves nothing. He says the unborn child has done nothing wrong, so the execution should wait until the birth. In the story the woman is saved only because the baby, born at least two years after the husband left, turns out to look like him and to have teeth.

Al-Bayhaqi treats this, with a cautious "if it is established", as evidence about human biology: a pregnancy of more than two years. He links it to a four-year waiting period for the wife of a missing husband. This is the same line of reasoning as Imam Malik's four-year pregnancies, published elsewhere on this page. A story from unnamed elders was enough for a leading Shafi'i hadith scholar to consider that a pregnancy might last years.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Umar did not stone the woman. He consulted, as a just ruler should, and accepted correction, and his "but for Mu'adh, Umar would have perished" is praise of humility. The chain rests on unnamed elders, and al-Bayhaqi himself says only "if it is established". The report proves nothing about Umar or about pregnancy.

Why it fails

The chain is weak, and this entry claims only what the tradition preserved and what a major scholar did with it. In the report, the stoning of a woman whose husband had been away for two years was under discussion, and the only objection recorded was on behalf of the fetus. The woman is not cleared by any doubt about her guilt; she is cleared by a biological marvel.

Al-Bayhaqi's hedge is real, but he still filed the story as evidence in a legal chapter and used it to explain one of Umar's rulings. A conditional "if it is established" did not stop the anecdote from doing legal work.

Check it yourself

The Prophet sells an insolvent free man, Surraq, for four camels Slavery & Captives Moral Problems Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 11275
"They brought me to the Prophet, and he said: You are Surraq. And he sold me for four camels."

What the hadith says

Al-Bayhaqi files this report (11275) under the heading "What has come about selling an insolvent free man for his debt". Zayd b. Aslam says he met an old man in Alexandria called Surraq, a name built on the Arabic root for theft, and asked about it. Surraq said the Messenger of Allah had given him the name: he came to Medina, told people his money was on its way, bought from them on credit and consumed their money. They brought him to the Prophet, who said "You are Surraq" and sold him for four camels. The creditors asked the buyer what he would do with him; he said he would free him; they said they were no less eager for the reward, "and they freed me between them". Just before it, al-Bayhaqi gives a broken (munqati') report that the Prophet ordered such a man to be sold (11274). After 11275 he says all its routes rest on men who "are not strong", Ibn al-Baylamani being "weak in hadith", and that "the consensus of the scholars against it, and they do not agree to abandon an established report, is evidence of its weakness, or of its abrogation if it were established." On dorar, Ibn al-Qattan calls al-Baylamani layyin (soft), Ibn al-Qaysarani and Ibn Adi fault Abd al-Rahman b. Abd Allah b. Dinar, while al-'Ayni, against the rest, calls a version's chain sound.

Why this is a problem

The Sunan of al-Bayhaqi contains a chapter on selling a free debtor, and its main report has the Prophet doing exactly that: a free man is turned into property for four camels to settle what he owed. The buyer and creditors free him out of piety, but the sale itself is the Prophet's act in the story. A second, broken report in the same chapter says the same thing in fewer words.

Al-Bayhaqi's answer is telling. He does not say the Prophet could not have done this. He offers two exits: the report is weak, or, if it is authentic, it was abrogated. Beyond its weak narrators, the case against it rests on the later consensus of jurists, and on al-Zuhri's remark that "we know of no free man sold for a debt" (11276). The tradition's protection for the free debtor comes from what scholars later agreed, not from anything the Prophet is reported to have forbidden.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak by al-Bayhaqi's own verdict, and that the scholars agree a free person is never sold for debt. The Quran itself commands patience with a debtor in hardship: "if he is in difficulty, then [let there be] respite until ease" (Q 2:280). Even on the most generous reading the report would be abrogated.

Why it fails

On the grading the response is largely right, and the entry rests on what was transmitted, not on a claim that it happened. But the report was not rejected outright. It was collected by al-Hakim in al-Mustadrak (as al-Bayhaqi notes), filed by al-Bayhaqi under its own legal heading, and judged sound in one version by al-'Ayni. Al-Bayhaqi himself allowed that it might be authentic and abrogated.

That last option concedes the problem: that for a time the Prophet's practice could have allowed a free man to be sold for debt. Q 2:280 is about respite, and al-Bayhaqi does not cite it here; he relies on consensus. The rule that protects the free debtor is the scholars' agreement, not a prophetic prohibition.

Check it yourself

'No Arab may be owned': Umar's rule, and a weak saying of the Prophet, set Arabs apart from slavery Slavery & Captives Moral Problems Governance Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18069
"There is no ownership over an Arab. We will not take from a man's hand anything he held when he became Muslim, but we will value them [for] the community at five camels."

What the hadith says

These are the words of the caliph Umar, as reported by al-Sha'bi, and a saying attributed to the Prophet that al-Bayhaqi rejects. In the chapter "On whom slavery applies", al-Shafi'i says (18067) that the Prophet took Banu al-Mustaliq, Hawazin and other Arab tribes captive and "applied slavery to them" until he later released them as a favour. Some experts on the campaigns claimed that on releasing Hawazin he said: "If captivity were to be complete upon any of the Arabs, it would have been complete upon these; but it is capture and ransom." Whoever accepts this, says al-Shafi'i, holds that slavery never applies to an Arab: the view of al-Zuhri, Sa'id b. al-Musayyib and al-Sha'bi, also reported from Umar and Umar b. Abd al-Aziz. Ibn al-Musayyib held (18068) that a client (mawla) who marries a slave-woman has enslaved children, while an Arab who does so does not, but owes their value. Al-Shafi'i himself treated Arabs and non-Arabs alike. Umar's words (18069) come with Abu Ubayd's gloss: the captor is paid five camels, and the Arab "returns to his lineage, an Arab as he was". Nearly the same words appear in Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 13160 and Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 34814. Al-Bayhaqi calls the Prophet's saying (via al-Waqidi from Mu'adh) "a weak chain, not used as proof" and Umar's words "broken (munqati') from Umar"; al-Shathri agrees, since al-Sha'bi did not hear Umar. Ibn al-Musayyib's report that Umar set a ransom of six camels for every Arab captive is, al-Bayhaqi says, "mursal, but good".

Why this is a problem

The concern in these reports is not slavery but who may be enslaved. A caliph rules that Arabs cannot be owned and buys them back from their Muslim captors, while captives of other peoples remain property. Sa'id b. al-Musayyib made the same distinction in family law: the child of an Arab and a slave-woman is free, the child of a non-Arab client and a slave-woman is a slave. Freedom was a matter of lineage.

The canonical record points the same way. Bukhari records the raid on Banu al-Mustaliq in which "their women and children were taken captive" (Bukhari 2541). It also records that A'isha owned a slave-girl from Banu Tamim, and that the Prophet told her to free her "for she is of the descendants of Ishmael" (Bukhari 2543). Descent from Ishmael is given as the reason to free her.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer, with al-Shafi'i and al-Bayhaqi, that the saying exempting Arabs is weak and Umar's statement has a broken chain. The settled law makes no ethnic distinction: the Prophet himself enslaved Arab captives, and al-Bayhaqi calls the enslavement of Banu al-Mustaliq and Hawazin "sound and established", their release "a favour". Umar's ransoms were a policy of generosity towards his own people, not a rule of religion.

Why it fails

The chains are as weak as al-Bayhaqi says, though Ibn al-Musayyib's report of Umar's ransom of Arab captives is one he calls good. But al-Shafi'i himself names al-Zuhri, Ibn al-Musayyib and al-Sha'bi as holding that Arabs are never enslaved. That was a real early legal position, and three collections preserved Umar's words.

The response also confirms the point. The ethnic exemption was removed by making Arabs as enslaveable as everyone else, not by questioning slavery. On either view the law the jurists built allowed slavery. They disagreed only over whether being an Arab protected a person from it.

Check it yourself

Ali on sex with two sisters owned as slaves: 'One verse makes them lawful and one verse forbids them' Slavery & Captives Sexual Issues Contradictions Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 13935
"One verse makes them lawful, and one verse forbids them. I do not command and I do not forbid, I do not permit and I do not prohibit, and I do not do it, nor does my household."

What the hadith says

These are Ali b. Abi Talib's own words, not the Prophet's. Al-Bayhaqi records them in the chapter "On the prohibition of combining two sisters, and a woman and her daughter, in intercourse by right of possession". Via Abu Salih (13935), Ali is asked about "the two owned sisters" and gives the answer quoted above. Via Hanash (13936), he is asked about a man who owns two slave-girls who are sisters and has intercourse with one: may he have intercourse with the other? Ali repeats "one verse makes them lawful and one verse forbids them" and adds, "and I forbid it to myself and my children." The forbidding verse is Q 4:23 ("and that you combine two sisters"); the permitting one is generally understood as the clause on "what your right hands own". Just before, A'isha is asked by a man whether he may take his concubine's grown daughter as a concubine too; she says no, and when he insists she must say Allah forbade it, answers only that "no one of my family does it, nor anyone who obeys me" (13934). Told of Ali's words, Ibn Abbas answers by citing Q 4:24, "except what your right hands own" (13937). Al-Bayhaqi gives no verdict; on dorar, al-Haythami says the narrators of Ali's answer to Ibn al-Kawwa' "are the narrators of the Sahih" (Majma' 4/272), and al-Bazzar says it is "narrated by several routes".

Why this is a problem

The question assumes something no one in the chapter questions: that a man may own two sisters and have sex with one of them. Ali, the fourth caliph, is asked only whether he may have sex with both. He finds the Quran pulling in two directions and refuses to rule either way. He will not do it himself and will not forbid it to anyone else. A'isha, asked about a concubine and her daughter, says no, but will not say that Allah has forbidden it.

The women's own view plays no part in any of this. The scholars debated it as a conflict between two verses, the ban on combining sisters and the permission over those "your right hands own". Ali, one of the most senior Companions, could not say which verse prevailed. Ibn Abbas answered by pointing to the clause on what the right hand owns.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the majority read Q 4:23's ban on combining two sisters as covering concubines as well as wives, and that the Sunni schools ended up forbidding intercourse with two sister-concubines at the same time. Al-Bayhaqi's own chapter heading calls it a "prohibition". Ali's hesitation was scrupulousness, not permission: he kept himself and his family away from it.

Why it fails

The later consensus is real, but it settled only the narrow question. It forbade having sex with both sisters at once. It did not question owning them, or having sex with either one. And the consensus came after Ali had treated the matter as open, in words al-Bayhaqi preserved: "I do not forbid."

The "contradiction" here is the Companions' own description, not a polemicist's: "one verse makes them lawful, and one verse forbids them." If the Quran's ruling were plain, the fourth caliph would not have needed to refuse to give one.

Check it yourself

Al-Shafi'i: 'I saw in San'a a grandmother aged twenty-one', menstruating at nine and a mother at ten Child Marriage Women Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 1531
"I saw in San'a a grandmother who was twenty-one years old. She menstruated at nine and gave birth at ten, and the daughter menstruated at nine and gave birth at ten."

What the hadith says

This is not a hadith. It is al-Shafi'i's own report of what he saw, quoted by al-Bayhaqi (1531) in the chapter "The age at which a woman has been found to menstruate", through Harmala's grandson. Al-Bayhaqi adds that al-Hasan b. Salih is reported to have said, "I knew a neighbour of ours who became a grandmother at twenty-one," and that Mughira al-Dabbi said he had his first wet dream at twelve. He ends: "We have narrated from A'isha that she said: When a girl reaches nine years, she is a woman," and glosses it: "meaning, and Allah knows best, that she menstruated, so she is a woman." We cite al-Shafi'i's statement from this page only, and no grading applies to an eyewitness claim. The A'isha line is weak: al-Albani calls it "weak as the Prophet's words, and I did not find its chain as A'isha's" (Irwa' al-Ghalil 1829), and Ibn al-Arabi says it "is not sound" ('Aridat al-Ahwadhi 3/34).

Why this is a problem

Al-Bayhaqi uses the report of the founder of a law school as evidence of how early a girl can become a woman. In al-Shafi'i's account, a grandmother in San'a and her daughter each menstruated at nine and gave birth at ten. Al-Bayhaqi then adds A'isha's supposed rule that a girl of nine "is a woman", which he explains as meaning that she has menstruated. That is the reasoning the passage records: once a girl has menstruated she counts as a woman, and nine becomes the age at which a girl can count as one.

A'isha herself was taken to the Prophet's house as a bride at nine (Muslim 1422c). A line attributed to her about girls of nine has no chain al-Albani could find, yet al-Bayhaqi recorded it, and it travelled together with a jurist's account of grandmothers at twenty-one.

The Muslim response

Apologists cite this very passage to argue that puberty at nine was normal in the climate and era of Arabia and Yemen, so that marriage at nine was not abnormal for its time and should not be judged by modern standards. Al-Shafi'i is simply recording a fact of nature.

Why it fails

The passage does not show that this was normal. Al-Shafi'i names a city and a single family, and a grandmother of twenty-one is worth reporting because she is unusual. Al-Bayhaqi files it in a chapter on the age at which women "have been found" to menstruate: a record of what has been observed, not an average.

Even on its own terms the argument assumes the equation the passage makes: that a girl who has menstruated is a woman and may be treated as one. That equation is the problem. It is a jurist's definition, and A'isha's "she is a woman" at nine, which would have supported it, has no chain al-Albani could find.

Check it yourself

Al-Bayhaqi on A'isha's dolls: 'In none of the reports is it said she had reached womanhood at her wedding' Child Marriage Prophetic Character Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 20983
"In none of the reports is it said that she had reached the maturity of women, other than by age, at the time of her wedding."

What the hadith says

The hadith here is canonical; what is new is al-Bayhaqi's comment on it. In the chapter "What has come about playing with dolls", al-Bayhaqi gives (20983) A'isha's report that the Prophet married her at seven, she was brought to him as a bride at nine "with her dolls", and he died when she was eighteen, noting that Muslim has it through Abd b. Humayd from Abd al-Razzaq (Muslim 1422c). He then comments: "In none of the reports is it said that she had reached the maturity of women, other than by age, at the time of her wedding. So it is possible that her occupation with her dolls, and the Prophet's allowing her that, lasted until the time of her puberty." He adds that Abu Ubayd understood it the same way: "Its reason, in our view, is only that they are an amusement for children; if they were for adults, it would be disliked." The comment is al-Bayhaqi's own and needs no chain.

Why this is a problem

A modern apologetic answer to A'isha's age is that she had reached puberty by the time the marriage was consummated, so she was physically a woman. Al-Bayhaqi, who had the reports in front of him, says that none of them shows this. All they give is her age. His explanation of the dolls goes further: it is possible, he says, that the Prophet's permission for them lasted until she reached puberty, and Abu Ubayd says dolls are permitted because they are a children's amusement, which would be disliked in an adult.

So in al-Bayhaqi's and Abu Ubayd's explanation, the permission for dolls rests on reading A'isha as a child at the time of her wedding. The classical scholar does not try to make her older. He uses her childhood as the legal basis for a ruling on toys.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that al-Bayhaqi speaks cautiously: he says only that no report mentions puberty, and that it is "possible" her play continued until she reached it. Absence of a report is not proof that she was prepubescent. Others argue that girls in that time and climate matured early, and that al-Bayhaqi was explaining a ruling on dolls, not discussing the marriage.

Why it fails

The caution is real, and the entry does not claim more than al-Bayhaqi says. But the burden of proof falls on the side making the claim. The claim that A'isha was physically mature at nine is the one with no report behind it, and the scholar who surveyed the reports says so. His "possible" concerns how long her doll-play lasted, not whether she was still a child, which his explanation assumes.

Nor can the comment be separated from the marriage. He wrote it under a report that gives her ages at the contract, at the wedding and at the Prophet's death, and he explains the dolls by her age "at the time of her wedding".

Check it yourself

Umar asks for Ali's daughter Umm Kulthum; Ali: 'She is too young for that' Child Marriage Women Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 13660
"Ali said to him: She is too young for that ... al-Shafi'i said: Al-Zubayr married off his daughter as a little girl, and more than one of the Companions of the Prophet married off his daughter while she was small."

What the hadith says

This is a report about Umar and Ali, followed by al-Shafi'i's own statement; neither is a saying of the Prophet except for the line Umar quotes. In the chapter "What has come about fathers marrying off virgins", al-Hasan b. al-Hasan reports from his father (13660) that Umar asked Ali for Umm Kulthum, and Ali said, "She is too young for that." Umar replied that he had heard the Prophet say, "Every tie and lineage is cut off on the Day of Resurrection except my tie and my lineage," and wanted a tie to him. Ali told al-Hasan and al-Husayn to marry her to "your uncle"; they said, "She is a woman among women who chooses for herself." Ali rose in anger, al-Hasan held his garment and said, "There is no bearing your estrangement, father," and they married her to Umar. Al-Bayhaqi then quotes al-Shafi'i: al-Zubayr and other Companions married off small daughters, and "if marriage of a virgin were valid only by her command, she could not be married until she had a say over herself". Her age is not stated. Al-Dhahabi says the chain "contains Ibn Waki', who is not relied on" (al-Muhadhdhab 5/2631), and al-Tabarani notes that Sufyan b. Waki' alone narrated it. A related report, published on the Abd al-Razzaq page, has Umar uncover the girl's leg.

Why this is a problem

Ali's objection is her age, not her wishes. It is overcome by the caliph's wish for a family tie to the Prophet, not by her growing older. The one voice in the story that speaks of her choosing for herself is her brothers', and it gives way to their father's anger. She is given to Umar without a word of hers recorded.

Al-Bayhaqi files the story as evidence for a father's power to marry off a virgin without her consent, and follows it with al-Shafi'i's broader claim: al-Zubayr married off his daughter as a little girl (sabiyya), and "more than one" Companion married off a daughter while small. Al-Shafi'i's legal conclusion is that a girl too young to have a say over herself may still be married by her father. That statement does not depend on Sufyan b. Waki's chain. It is the founder of a law school describing what the Companions did.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is weak, so the details cannot be relied on. The story's own framing is honourable: Ali hesitated over his daughter's readiness, Umar sought kinship with the Prophet rather than anything base, and the marriage was valid. The brothers' remark that she "chooses for herself" suggests she was no longer a small child.

Why it fails

On the chain the response is right. But the report is internally uneven, and the response picks one half: Ali says she is too young, while her brothers say she chooses for herself. The text does not settle it, and her age is never given. What is not uneven is the use al-Bayhaqi and al-Shafi'i make of it: a chapter on fathers marrying off virgins, and a jurist's claim that Companions married off small daughters.

That claim is the entry's distinct point, beyond the published Abd al-Razzaq report. The caliph's motive does not change what the jurist concluded, that a father may marry off a girl before she can consent.

Check it yourself

Umar: 'Two mut'as existed in the time of the Messenger of Allah, and I forbid them and punish for them' Sexual Issues Governance Abrogation Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 14170
"The Messenger of Allah is this Messenger, and this Qur'an is this Qur'an. There were two mut'as in the time of the Messenger of Allah, and I forbid them and punish for them."

What the hadith says

These are Umar's words in a sermon, not the Prophet's. In the chapter on temporary marriage (nikah al-mut'a), al-Bayhaqi gives (14170) Jabir b. Abd Allah's account through Hammam, Qatada and Abu Nadra: "We did mut'a with the Messenger of Allah and with Abu Bakr. When Umar took charge, he addressed the people" with the words quoted above, and went on: "One of them is the mut'a of women, and I will not get hold of a man who married a woman for a term without burying him under stones; the other is the mut'a of hajj: separate your hajj from your umra." Al-Bayhaqi notes that Muslim has it by another route from Hammam. Muslim's text (1217a, 1217b) keeps the stoning threat but reads differently: "Allah used to permit His Messenger whatever He willed," with no "two mut'as ... I forbid them and punish for them". On dorar, Ibn Hazm calls Abu Qilaba's version of the same words sahih (al-Muhalla 7/107), and Ibn Baz calls it thabit (established). Al-Bayhaqi accepts the report and explains it.

Why this is a problem

Umar does not say that the Prophet forbade either practice. He says both existed in the Prophet's time and that he, Umar, forbids them and will punish for them. For temporary marriage he threatens stoning, the penalty for adultery. His opening, "the Messenger is this Messenger, and the Qur'an is this Qur'an", stresses that nothing in the sources has changed. The ban is his.

Al-Bayhaqi's own comment shows the difficulty. He says the Prophet had banned temporary marriage in the year of the Conquest, so Umar's ban "agreed with the Sunna". But for the mut'a of hajj he admits, "we did not find that he forbade it in a sound report", and so he reads Umar's "I forbid them and punish for them" as a mere preference when it applies to hajj. The same sentence becomes a prohibition for one practice and advice for the other. Sunnis today perform the hajj mut'a (tamattu') that the caliph forbade and threatened to punish.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer, with al-Bayhaqi, that the Prophet himself forbade temporary marriage at the Conquest of Mecca and never allowed it again before he died, so Umar only announced and enforced an existing ban. His words about the hajj expressed a preference for performing hajj and umra separately, "more complete for both", not a prohibition.

Why it fails

If Umar were enforcing the Prophet's ban, the natural thing to say was that the Prophet had banned it. In another report that al-Bayhaqi gives next, and accepts only "if it is sound" (14171), Umar does say that; in this sermon he does not. Instead the sermon presents two practices from the Prophet's time and a new ruler's ban on both, using the same verbs for each. Al-Bayhaqi has to split one sentence into a binding prohibition and a non-binding preference, and he admits that for one half there was no prophetic ban to enforce.

The canonical version is softer in wording, which is why this one matters. Al-Bayhaqi's text, accepted by Ibn Hazm and Ibn Baz, is Umar claiming the authority to forbid what was done under the Prophet, and backing it with stoning.

Check it yourself

'It is written in the Torah': if a man's daughter reaches twelve unmarried and sins, the sin is on him Child Marriage Scripture Integrity Women Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 8302
"It is written in the Torah: whoever has a daughter who reaches twelve years and he does not marry her off, and she commits a sin, the sin of that is on him."

What the hadith says

This saying is attributed to the Prophet. Al-Bayhaqi records it in Shu'ab al-Iman, in the section on the rights of children and family, through Umar b. al-Khattab (8302) and, from a copy in al-Hakim's handwriting, through Anas b. Malik (8303). Al-Hakim said of the Anas chain: "This is a sound chain, and the text is utterly anomalous (shadhdh bi-marra)." Al-Bayhaqi added: "We narrate it only with the first chain; with this chain it is munkar (unacceptable)." The editor of the al-Rushd edition grades Umar's chain weak (Abu Bakr b. Abi Maryam is weak; al-Dhahabi says Abu al-Majashi' is unknown) and notes that al-Suyuti marked it weak and al-Albani graded it weak (Da'if al-Jami' 5276). He nonetheless grades the Anas chain hasan (good). It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The saying does not order marriage at twelve. It does something that may be more effective: it makes the father answerable before God for any sin his daughter commits if she is still unmarried at twelve. A father who wants to protect himself has a religious reason to marry her off by then. It attributes this to the Torah, though we know of no such provision in the Torah as Jews and Christians have it.

The Anas version failed on its content more than its chain. Al-Hakim found the Anas chain sound and the modern editor rates it hasan. Al-Hakim's objection was that the text was "utterly anomalous", and al-Bayhaqi called that chain munkar; yet al-Bayhaqi still transmitted it twice in a work on the branches of faith, under the rights of children.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak or munkar by the verdicts of al-Bayhaqi and al-Hakim themselves, and weak according to al-Suyuti and al-Albani. It is not the Prophet's words, so it binds no one. A claim about the Torah that cannot be found there is one more sign that it is not authentic.

Why it fails

The response is largely right, and the entry does not claim that Muslims must believe this. Its point is what the tradition transmitted. A saying that makes a father guilty for his twelve-year-old daughter's sins circulated under the Prophet's name with a chain al-Hakim judged sound, and two hadith masters recorded it.

For the Anas chain, what caught it was al-Hakim's sense that the text was anomalous, not the chain analysis that is usually offered as the guarantee of the hadith corpus.

Check it yourself

Umar: women are of three kinds; the third is 'a lice-ridden collar Allah puts on the neck of whom He wills' Women Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 8351
"Women are three: a chaste, Muslim, gentle, soft, loving woman who helps her family against hard times and does not help hard times against her family, and how rarely you find her; a woman who is a vessel, who does no more than bear the child; and a third, a lice-ridden collar that Allah puts on the neck of whom He wills, and when He wills to remove it, He removes it."

What the hadith says

These are Umar b. al-Khattab's own words, not the Prophet's. Al-Bayhaqi gives them in Shu'ab al-Iman (8351), in the section on the rights of children and family, through Abd al-Malik b. Umayr, Zayd b. Uqba and Samura b. Jundab. The editor of the al-Rushd edition says its narrators are declared reliable and that Ibn Abi Shayba has it with the addition "and men are three". He explains the image: captors bound a prisoner with a collar of rawhide with the hair still on, which bred lice as it dried, so that two torments came together. Umar used it "as a simile for the ill-natured woman with a large dowry, from whom her husband finds no escape". Just before it, Umar is quoted saying that no man gained anything better after Islam than a beautiful, good-natured, loving, fertile woman, and nothing worse after unbelief than an ill-natured, sharp-tongued one (8350). Al-Bayhaqi then gives a version attributed to the Prophet from Jabir (8352): women are a vessel that "carries and gives birth", a kind like mange, and a loving, fertile, Muslim kind. The editor calls its chain weak and quotes Abu Hatim calling it munkar.

Why this is a problem

Every category in Umar's list is defined by what the woman is to her husband and his household. The best is the one who helps her family and is rarely found. The middle one is a "vessel" who "does no more than bear the child". The third is a captive's collar full of lice, placed by Allah on a man's neck and removed only when Allah wills.

The man in the picture is the prisoner; the woman is his torment. Al-Bayhaqi preserved the saying in a work on the branches of faith, under the rights of family, with narrators the editor declares reliable (muwaththaqun). The version that reached the Prophet's name is weak, but Umar's own is not.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this is Umar's proverb about bad character in a spouse, not a judgement on women. It is balanced by high praise of the good wife, and by the report before it about the best thing a man can gain. According to the editor, Ibn Abi Shayba's version adds "and men are three", so the saying is a typology of spouses of both sexes.

Why it fails

The praise is real, but it measures women by the same standard: a good wife is one who serves her family well, and a fertile one. The "men are three" addition is known here only from the editor's note. The Shu'ab text gives no list of men, so we cannot tell whether men are judged by their use to their wives in the same way.

This is a minor text, the words of a Companion, and the entry claims no more. It shows how the second caliph spoke about women, recorded with narrators the editor declares reliable, in a book about faith.

Check it yourself

Ali: Sarah swore to mutilate Hagar; Abraham told her to pierce Hagar's ears or circumcise her, 'and that was the first female circumcision' Women Pre-Islamic Borrowings Slavery & Captives Moderate al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 8277
"Sarah said: By Allah, I will alter three of her extremities. Abraham feared she would mutilate her or slit her ears, so he said to her: Will you do something and fulfil your oath? Pierce her ears or circumcise her. And that was the first female circumcision."

What the hadith says

These are Ali b. Abi Talib's words, not the Prophet's. Al-Bayhaqi gives them in Shu'ab al-Iman (8277) among reports on circumcision, through Sufyan al-Thawri, Abu Ishaq and Haritha b. Mudarrib. Ali says Hagar belonged to Sarah, who gave her to Abraham. When Ishmael beat Isaac in a race and sat in Abraham's lap, Sarah swore the oath quoted above, and Abraham offered her a way to keep it. The word for circumcising her, takhfidiha, is the term for female circumcision, and the report ends "that was the first khifad". The text says "pierce her ears or circumcise her". The editor of the al-Rushd edition grades the chain "like the one before it", which he grades hasan (good). In his note he cites Ibn Kathir's Qisas al-Anbiya' for a version in which Abraham told her to pierce Hagar's ears and circumcise her, and al-Suhayli's remark that Hagar "was the first of women to be circumcised". IslamQA judges the chain weak by the rules of hadith science, because Abu Ishaq was a mudallis who here uses an unspecific "from", while granting that it is sound if he heard it from Haritha.

Why this is a problem

In this origin story, female circumcision begins as a punishment. A jealous mistress swears to disfigure her slave-woman, and a prophet turns the oath into a smaller cut so that it can be kept. Hagar, whom Sarah had given to Abraham, is not asked. The cutting is done to her because of another woman's anger.

The story was not left in one book. It was told on Ali's authority with a chain the editor grades hasan, and it was repeated by later scholars, as the editor's own note shows, with Abraham's "or" becoming "and". It gave the practice a founding moment in sacred history, and that moment is the mutilation of a slave.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak and that "nothing about it is transmitted from the Prophet", as IslamQA puts it. No scholar who cited it, it says, affirmed that it was authentic. It is a Companion's story about ancient history, not a ruling, and it neither commands nor recommends anything.

Why it fails

The grading is disputed, not settled: the Shu'ab editor grades the chain hasan, and IslamQA concedes it would be sound if Abu Ishaq heard it directly. The entry's claim does not depend on settling that. It concerns what the tradition handed down as the origin of female circumcision, and who handed it down: Ali, as reported; al-Bayhaqi; Ibn Kathir, as quoted in the editor's note.

That the story "commands nothing" is true and beside the point. An origin story tells believers where a practice came from, and this one locates it in a mistress's oath to mutilate her slave.

Check it yourself

The 'Pact of Umar': Christians promise no new churches, no public crosses, distinctive dress, and to rise for Muslims Disbelievers Governance Moral Problems Strong al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18717
"If we contravene anything of what we have stipulated to you and guaranteed on our own behalf, then we have no protection (dhimma), and it has become lawful for you to do to us what is lawful for you against the people of obstinacy and wretchedness."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Rahman b. Ghanm says: 'I wrote for Umar b. al-Khattab when he made peace with the people of Syria.' The letter that follows is written in the voice of 'the Christians of such-and-such a city', who ask for safety and in return bind themselves: to build no new church or monastery and not to repair ruined ones; to lodge passing Muslims for three days; not to teach their children the Quran or stop relatives from entering Islam; to rise from their seats for Muslims; not to imitate Muslim dress, speech or kunyas (honorific names); not to ride on saddles or carry swords or weapons; to cut the fronts of their hair and wear the zunnar belt; not to show crosses in Muslim streets or on their churches, nor strike the clapper (naqus) in the presence of Muslims. Umar adds 'and that we strike no Muslim'. Al-Bayhaqi records it in al-Sunan al-Kubra 18717 without comment. Al-Albani calls the chain da'if jiddan (very weak), and al-Dhahabi points to the narrator Yahya b. Uqba, whom Abu Hatim said forged hadith. Yet Ibn Kathir says it has good routes, and Ibn al-Qayyim says its fame makes a chain unnecessary because the imams received it with acceptance (all on dorar).

Why this is a problem

This is not a treaty between equals but a catalogue of public subordination. Christians must stand when Muslims want their seats, dress so that they can be told apart, give up the saddle and the sword, keep their worship out of sight and earshot, and let their churches decay. Its last line turns every one of these clauses into a matter of life and death: break any condition and 'we have no protection', and the Muslims may treat them as they treat enemies. Even striking a Muslim, the one clause Umar personally added, forfeits the protection.

The weak chain sharpens the problem rather than reducing it. Al-Bayhaqi files the document under 'The imam writes the peace document on the jizya', as a model. Ibn Kathir defended its routes, and Ibn al-Qayyim, in his book on the rules for non-Muslim subjects, said no chain was needed because the imams had accepted it. The scholars did not adopt these conditions because they were well transmitted; they adopted them because they agreed with them.

The Muslim response

Muslims point out that the document is framed as the Christians' own offer, and that it secured safety for their lives, families, property and co-religionists. Many simply treat it as Umar's legitimate policy: asked about the Pact as quoted in Ibn Kathir's commentary, a South African mufti replied, 'How can we disagree with an illustrious person like Hadhrat Umar'. Others deny that Umar wrote it at all: Bernard Lewis judged that the document 'can hardly be authentic', and Mark Cohen notes that no text of it can be dated earlier than the tenth or eleventh century (both as quoted on Wikipedia).

Why it fails

The 'own offer' framing is the form of the document, not its substance. People who have just been conquered and are asking for their lives do not volunteer to cut their forelocks and rise for their conquerors; the conditions are the price of safety, and the closing clause says what happens if the price is not paid.

The historical doubt does not help either. If the Pact is a later composition, then later Muslims wrote these rules themselves and gave them Umar's authority. Whoever drafted it, al-Bayhaqi printed it as a model, Ibn Kathir and Ibn al-Qayyim defended it, and a modern mufti still declines to disagree with it.

Check it yourself

Umar on Abu Musa's Christian scribe: 'Do not honour them when Allah has humiliated them' Disbelievers Governance Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 20409
"Do not honour them when Allah has humiliated them, do not bring them near when Allah has put them far, and do not trust them when Allah has declared them treacherous."

What the hadith says

Iyad al-Ash'ari reports that Abu Musa al-Ash'ari came to Umar b. al-Khattab with a Christian scribe. Umar was impressed by the man's memory and asked that he read them a letter. Abu Musa said the man was a Christian and did not enter the mosque. Umar rebuked him, was about to strike him, and said these words. Al-Bayhaqi gives it in al-Sunan al-Kubra 20409, and al-Albani calls its chain sahih (Irwa' al-Ghalil 8/255, on dorar). In a second chain printed straight after it, Abu Musa tells it himself: Umar asked, 'Is he in a state of major impurity?' 'No, he is a Christian.' Umar shouted at Abu Musa, struck Abu Musa's thigh, said 'Expel him', and recited Q 5:51, 'Do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies.' Abu Musa protested that he had not taken him as an ally, 'he only wrote'. Umar answered: 'Did you not find among the people of Islam someone to write for you? ... Do not raise them up after Allah has abased them. Expel him.' These are Umar's words, not the Prophet's.

Why this is a problem

Nothing in the story faults the scribe. Umar's first reaction is admiration for his skill; the only thing that changes is learning his religion. The reasons Umar then gives are not about this man's conduct but about his community's standing before God: Allah has humiliated them, put them far and declared them treacherous, so Muslims must not honour, approach or trust them. The second version ties the dismissal to Q 5:51, so that employing a capable Christian clerk is treated as a breach of the Quran's ban on alliance with Jews and Christians.

Al-Bayhaqi turns the incident into law. His chapter heading reads: 'A judge or governor should not take a dhimmi as scribe, nor place a dhimmi where he is preferred over a Muslim'. A ruling by the second caliph, with a chain al-Albani calls sound, becomes the basis for keeping protected non-Muslims out of positions of trust, on the stated ground that God has disgraced them.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this was Umar's administrative judgment as head of a young state, concerned with who handled its accounts and correspondence, not a revealed command. His words concern office and trust, not ordinary dealings: the Quran allows kindness and justice towards non-Muslims who do not fight the Muslims (Q 60:8). And the fact that Abu Musa had employed the man at all shows the practice existed among the Companions.

Why it fails

Q 60:8 permits kindness; Umar's report is about trust, and on trust it is categorical: 'do not trust them when Allah has declared them treacherous'. The ground given is a claim about what God has done to Christians as a whole, which no administrative reasoning can narrow to one post or one period.

It is true that Abu Musa employed him; the point of the story is that Umar overruled him, struck him and ordered the man out. Al-Bayhaqi recorded the caliph's correction, not the governor's practice, as the rule.

Check it yourself

A Companion breaks a Christian's nose for speaking against Muhammad; Amr b. al-As: 'You are right' Disbelievers Governance Moral Problems Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18710
"God forbid that we gave it to them on condition that they openly revile the Prophet! We only gave it to them on condition that we leave them alone with their churches, saying in them whatever they please."

What the hadith says

Ka'b b. Alqama reports that a Christian passed by 'Arafa b. al-Harith al-Kindi (usually named Ghurfa), who invited him to Islam. The Christian spoke against the Prophet; his words are not given. 'Arafa raised his hand and smashed his nose. The matter was taken to Amr b. al-As, who said, 'We gave them a covenant.' 'Arafa replied that the covenant guaranteed them their churches, no burden beyond their capacity, defence against their enemies and their own laws, but never the right to revile the Prophet openly. Amr said, 'You are right.' Al-Bayhaqi records it in al-Sunan al-Kubra 18710, where the report ends: ''Arafa had companionship'. Al-Tabarani tells the same story of Ghurfa and a Christian of Egypt and notes that it comes only by this chain, from Harmala b. Imran alone (on dorar). Ibn Kathir (Irshad al-Faqih 2/345) and Ibn Hajar (al-Isaba 3/195) both call its chain sahih; al-Haythami notes that al-Tabarani's chain has Abd Allah b. Salih, al-Layth's scribe, who was declared reliable but has weakness, the rest being trustworthy (on dorar).

Why this is a problem

The Christian was approached by a Muslim who invited him to convert, and he answered by speaking against the man whose religion he was being invited to. For that he was assaulted, and the governor, after first recalling that the Christians were under covenant, accepted the attacker's reasoning and let the assault stand. The Christian gets no hearing and no redress; Amr's 'You are right' makes the blow lawful after the fact.

'Arafa's account of the covenant also sets out its limits plainly. Christians may say what they like inside their churches; in public they may not speak against Muhammad, even in reply to a Muslim preaching to them. Al-Bayhaqi files the story under the heading 'It is stipulated that they mention the Messenger of Allah only as befits him', so this one-way freedom of speech is presented as a term of the dhimmi contract.

The Muslim response

Muslims can answer that the report is thinly attested: al-Tabarani says it has a single chain, and al-Haythami notes a narrator with weakness in al-Tabarani's version. On this account the covenant protected Christian worship and law, defended them against enemies and did not burden them beyond their capacity; it only excluded public abuse of the Prophet, which al-Bayhaqi's chapter heading states as a recognised condition. And the man was struck, not killed.

Why it fails

The report has a single chain, but Ibn Kathir and Ibn Hajar both called that chain sound, and al-Bayhaqi preserved it under a legal heading as precedent. But the response concedes the rule the story illustrates: the condition that dhimmis speak of the Prophet only 'as befits him' does not depend on this chain; it is al-Bayhaqi's own chapter title.

'He was not killed' is a low bar. The story shows a private Muslim enforcing that condition with his fist, on a man he had himself just approached, and a Companion governor approving it. A covenant whose protection holds only while the protected party keeps quiet about Islam's prophet is not a guarantee of free speech in any ordinary sense.

Check it yourself

Ali has a convert to Christianity trampled to death: 'Christ is his Lord' Apostasy & Blasphemy Jesus / Christology Governance Strong al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 16885
"Ali said: 'Trample him.' So he was trampled until he died. I said to the man next to me, 'What did he say?' He said: 'He said: Christ is his Lord.'"

What the hadith says

Abd al-Malik b. Umayr says he was present when al-Mustawrid b. Qabisa of the Banu Ijl, a Muslim who had become a Christian, was brought to Ali b. Abi Talib. The man said, 'I am on the religion of the Messiah.' Ali said, 'And I am on the religion of the Messiah. What do you say about him?' The man said something the narrator could not hear, and Ali ordered him trampled. A bystander told the narrator what he had said: 'Christ is his Lord.' Al-Bayhaqi records it in al-Sunan al-Kubra 16885, through al-Daraqutni. The killing itself is told by several other chains. In 12461, after Ali killed him the Christians offered thirty thousand for his corpse, and Ali refused to sell it and burned it; in 12462 he was offered Islam, refused, and was killed. Abd al-Razzaq has Ali ask him to repent and then kill him (Musannaf 10139), the same thirty-thousand offer and burning of the body (18710), and Ali striking him with his foot before 'the people killed him' (18711). No critic's grading of these reports was found. This is Ali's act as caliph, not a saying of the Prophet.

Why this is a problem

The man's offence is a sentence about Jesus. Ali's question, 'What do you say about him?', is a test of creed, and the answer 'Christ is his Lord' is enough for death. In the trampling version (16885) there is no trial and no recorded call to repent: the order is 'trample him', and he dies under people's feet. The versions differ on the method, but they agree that the fourth caliph had a man killed for becoming a Christian.

The body was then treated as refuse. Abd al-Razzaq's account calls it a jifa, a carcass; the Christians offered thirty thousand for it, and Ali burned it instead. In Ammar al-Duhni's account in Abd al-Razzaq 18710 the man says 'I seek the Messiah's help against you'; Ali finds a cross on his neck, cuts it off, says 'Kill him, servants of Allah', and afterwards renews his ablution because he had touched 'these filthy things'. In Bukhari 6922 Ibn Abbas objects when Ali burns heretics, because the Prophet forbade punishing with fire, but he endorses the killing itself: 'Whoever changes his religion, kill him.'

The Muslim response

Muslims reply that the trampling rests on one chain and an overheard remark, and that no critic has graded these reports. The fuller versions say the man was asked to repent first, as the law requires. Execution of an adult who leaves Islam of his own free will is the ruling, carried out by the ruler or his deputy (IslamQA 20327), so Ali was applying the law, not acting from personal anger.

Why it fails

The response is right that the trampling stands on a single ungraded chain, and this entry does not present it as established. But nothing important rests on it. The killing of al-Mustawrid for becoming a Christian is told by several chains in al-Bayhaqi and Abd al-Razzaq, and the burning of his corpse by two.

'He was asked to repent first' changes only the procedure. A man who will not give up believing that Christ is Lord is put to death, and the response's own source still teaches it as the ruling.

Check it yourself

A sorcerer 'cuts off heads and restores them' at al-Walid's court; a Muslim beheads him: 'If he is truthful, let him bring himself back to life' Magic & Occult Strange / Obscure Hudud Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 16502
"He would strike a man's head, then shout at him, and the man would get up and his head would return to him. The people said: 'Glory be to Allah, he brings the dead to life!' ... The man drew his sword and struck his neck, and said: 'If he is truthful, let him bring himself back to life.'"

What the hadith says

Abu al-Aswad, a Successor, relates that a sorcerer used to perform before al-Walid b. Uqba in Iraq. He would strike a man's head, shout at him, and the man would rise with his head restored, and people exclaimed that he brought the dead to life. A righteous man of the Emigrants watched; the next day he came with his sword under his cloak, and when the sorcerer began his act he drew it and beheaded him. Al-Walid had him jailed, but the jailer, Dinar, a good man, admired him and let him escape: 'Go, Allah will never question me about you.' Al-Bayhaqi records this in al-Sunan al-Kubra 16502; the report just before it, 16501, names the killer as Jundub al-Bajali, who then recited Q 21:3, 'Will you go to sorcery while you see?' No grading of either report was found, and 16502 comes from a Successor, not an eyewitness. The saying 'the punishment of the sorcerer is a blow with the sword' is in Tirmidhi 1460, where al-Tirmidhi says the sound version is Jundub's own words.

Why this is a problem

The story itself treats the head trick as illusion: it is sorcery that fooled the crowd, and the killer's taunt rests on the sorcerer being unable to revive himself. So the man was killed not for murder or harm but for a performance at the governor's court. He was killed on the spot, by a private individual, without accusation, trial or any chance to repent, and the narrator calls the killer 'a righteous man of the Emigrants'.

The account takes the killer's side throughout. The governor jails him; the 'good' jailer frees him; and al-Bayhaqi places the story in the chapter 'Declaring the sorcerer an unbeliever and killing him if what he uses for sorcery is words of explicit unbelief', with the Jundub version beside it. A summary beheading in front of the authorities becomes a model of zeal, and releasing the killer is presented as piety.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is not a saying of the Prophet and that its chain does not reach a witness. The jurists also did not agree that every sorcerer is killed: al-Tirmidhi notes that Malik held this view, while al-Shafi'i said a sorcerer is killed only when his sorcery amounts to unbelief (Tirmidhi 1460). Al-Bayhaqi's full chapter title limits the killing to the case where 'what he uses for sorcery is words of explicit unbelief'.

Why it fails

The response is right that this is a Successor's story, ungraded, and not a word of the Prophet. But the death penalty for sorcery is not drawn from this story alone; al-Tirmidhi reports that some Companions and later scholars acted on it, and Malik applied it. Al-Shafi'i's limit narrows who is killed, not whether.

The story shows no inquiry into what the sorcerer used: no one asks whether his words were unbelief before the sword falls. Al-Bayhaqi nonetheless filed this vigilante killing as evidence for his chapter. The tradition kept the story as an example to follow, not as a warning.

Check it yourself

A'isha's slave-girl bewitched her to be freed: 'Find the Arabs who are the worst owners and sell her to them' Magic & Occult Slavery & Captives Moral Problems Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 16506
"I vow to Allah that you will never be freed. Look for the Arabs who are the worst owners, and sell her to them."

What the hadith says

Amra bint Abd al-Rahman reports that A'isha fell ill. Some of her nephews mentioned it to a man of the Zutt who practised medicine. He told them they were describing a woman bewitched by her own slave-girl, who at that moment had in her lap a boy who had urinated on her. They found it so. A'isha asked the girl, 'Did you bewitch me?' 'Yes.' 'Why?' 'I wanted to be freed.' A'isha had arranged for her to be freed at A'isha's death. A'isha said: 'I vow to Allah that you will never be freed', ordered her sold to the worst owners among the Arabs, and with the price bought another slave-girl and freed her. Al-Bayhaqi gives it in al-Sunan al-Kubra 16506 without comment, and al-Albani grades it sahih (Irwa' al-Ghalil, on dorar). It is A'isha's act, not the Prophet's.

Why this is a problem

The slave's motive was freedom, and that freedom was due only at A'isha's death. On the story's own logic, a slave who was promised liberty when her owner died used sorcery to bring that day closer. A'isha's answer is to cancel the promise for ever and then choose the harshest buyers she can find: not to sell her, but to sell her to 'the worst of the Arabs as owners', so that her remaining life as a slave would be as hard as possible. This is punishment by the deliberate choice of an abusive master, decided by a Mother of the Believers.

The story also takes for granted things a modern reader cannot. A healer who has not seen the patient diagnoses sorcery and describes what the slave-girl is doing at that moment, and his word is accepted as true. Al-Bayhaqi files the report under 'The one whose sorcery is not unbelief and who killed no one by it is not killed', that is, as the lenient precedent.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the girl confessed to a serious crime against her owner, and that A'isha spared her life when other jurists would have had a sorcerer killed; al-Bayhaqi cites the case precisely for that leniency. Cancelling a promised freedom after the slave tried to harm the person who made it is a proportionate response. A'isha also used the price to buy and free another slave, so the outcome in her household was an act of manumission.

Why it fails

The leniency is real only by comparison with death. Within slavery, A'isha chose the worst outcome available to her and said so: she did not simply sell the girl, she asked for the cruellest owners. Freeing a different slave with the money does not lessen what was done to this one; it shows that A'isha's piety and her vengeance worked through the same institution.

The case was transmitted with a chain al-Albani calls sound and used as legal precedent. Its lesson for later readers is that an owner may punish a slave by handing her over to cruelty on purpose, and that a revered figure did exactly that.

Check it yourself

'The sultan is the shadow of Allah on earth': do not enter a town that has none Governance Allah's Character Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 16650
"If you pass a town that has no sultan, do not enter it. The sultan is only the shadow of Allah on earth, and His spear on earth."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik is reported to have heard this from the Prophet. Al-Bayhaqi gives it in al-Sunan al-Kubra 16650, in the chapter on the merit of the just ruler. Al-Albani grades this wording munkar, rejected (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 1661, on dorar). In Shu'ab al-Iman 6984 al-Bayhaqi gives a fuller version from Ibn Umar: every wronged servant takes refuge in the sultan; if he is just, the reward is his and the subjects owe gratitude; if he is unjust, the burden is his and 'the subjects owe patience'. There al-Bayhaqi himself says its narrator Sa'id b. Sinan 'is weak according to the scholars', and the editor grades the chain da'if jiddan, very weak (footnote). The phrase is not fabricated in every form: a wording from Abu Bakra, 'whoever honours him, Allah honours him, and whoever humiliates him, Allah humiliates him', is graded hasan by al-Albani in his takhrij of Kitab al-Sunna (1024), though weak in his al-Silsila al-Da'ifa (1662) and Da'if al-Jami' (3350), and al-Suyuti marks it sahih (on dorar).

Why this is a problem

The ruler is described in terms that belong to God: His shadow and His spear on earth. A town without a sultan is to be avoided altogether, as if the absence of a ruler were the absence of divine protection. The image does not make the ruler's standing depend on justice; it attaches it to the office itself.

The Shu'ab version spells out the political consequence. A just ruler earns reward; an unjust one carries his own sin, and the subjects' duty in either case is fixed: gratitude under the just, patience under the tyrant. Nothing is said about resisting or removing him. The weak Anas wording can be set aside, but the idea it carries survived in a form al-Albani graded hasan in one of his works, though weak in two others: honour the ruler and Allah honours you, humiliate him and Allah humiliates you.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the Anas and Ibn Umar wordings are weak, one called munkar and the other weakened by its own collector and called very weak by his editor, so neither can establish anything. Even where the phrase is accepted, scholars explain the 'shadow' as shelter: the ruler is the means by which Allah protects the weak from oppression, which the Shu'ab wording itself says. That is a duty laid on the ruler, not a licence for him.

Why it fails

The response is right about these two chains, and this entry presents them as what al-Bayhaqi collected, with his own warning on one of them. But the shelter reading does not remove the problem; it describes the ideal. The same text assigns the cost of failure to the subjects, who are to be patient when the shelter turns into oppression.

Nor does weakness end the matter. In another wording the 'shadow of Allah' phrase was graded hasan by al-Albani in one work (weak in two others), al-Suyuti called that wording sound, and al-Bayhaqi placed the Anas version under 'the merit of the just ruler' without comment. The tradition gave rulers the language of divine representation and their subjects the duty of patience.

Check it yourself

'Seek knowledge even in China': the famous saying al-Bayhaqi himself calls weak Science Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 1543
"Seek knowledge even in China, for seeking knowledge is an obligation on every Muslim."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik is reported to have heard this from the Prophet, through Abu Atika Tarif b. Salman. Al-Bayhaqi gives it in Shu'ab al-Iman 1543 and comments at once: 'This is a hadith whose text is well known and whose chain is weak; it has been narrated in several ways, all of them weak.' The editor's notes add that al-Uqayli knew 'even in China' only from Abu Atika, whom he calls matruk (abandoned); that al-Albani called the first half batil, false; and that Ibn al-Jawzi put it among fabricated reports, quoting Ibn Hibban: 'false, it has no basis'. Al-Albani elsewhere grades the whole mawdu', fabricated, while al-Suyuti held that its many routes together raise it to hasan (on dorar). The second half alone, 'seeking knowledge is an obligation on every Muslim', is in Ibn Majah 224.

Why this is a problem

'Seek knowledge even in China' is one of the most quoted sayings attributed to Muhammad, widely cited as proof that Islam encourages learning wherever it is found. The collector who preserved it did not believe the Prophet said it. Al-Bayhaqi recorded it and in the same breath called every chain he knew weak; other critics, before and after him, went further and called it false and baseless.

The point is not that the saying is harmful but that its popularity has nothing to do with its pedigree. A line that hadith scholars had rejected since at least Ibn Hibban (d. AD 965) stayed in wide circulation because it says something attractive. And the shorter canonical wording does not carry the meaning the slogan is used for: Muslim scholars explain the obligatory 'knowledge' as knowledge of religion, not of the world.

The Muslim response

Mainstream Muslim scholars agree that the China wording should not be quoted as the Prophet's. IslamQA calls it 'a false hadeeth', citing al-Albani's verdict of fabricated, and points instead to the wording in Ibn Majah, which it says al-Albani classed as sahih, explaining that the knowledge meant is knowledge of the shari'a (IslamQA 13637). Al-Suyuti's view that the routes strengthen one another also means not every scholar dismissed it.

Why it fails

The response is largely right, and this entry does not claim more: the saying is weak by al-Bayhaqi's own verdict and fabricated by al-Albani's, and careful Muslim scholars say so. The critique is of the use, not of the scholars who rejected it.

Even the fallback is less firm than it sounds. The editor of the Shu'ab reports al-Albani's view that 'an obligation on every Muslim' reaches hasan by combining its many routes from Anas, and sunnah.com shows Ibn Majah 224 graded very weak on its own chain. And on the scholars' own explanation, the obligation it states is religious learning, not the open-ended pursuit of knowledge that the China line is quoted to support.

Check it yourself

'Whoever keeps a white rooster is protected from three: every devil, sorcerer and soothsayer' Animals Magic & Occult Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 4814
"Roosters give the call to prayer. Whoever keeps a white rooster is protected from three: from the evil of every devil, sorcerer and soothsayer."

What the hadith says

Abd Allah b. Umar is reported to have heard this from the Prophet. Al-Bayhaqi gives it in Shu'ab al-Iman 4814 without comment. Immediately before it (4813) he gives Jabir's report that 'the Messenger of Allah ordered the keeping of the white rooster', and says of that one: 'with this chain it is munkar; al-Lahabi alone has it; it is also narrated with a mursal chain, and that is more likely.' The editor says of 4814 that the author's teacher and his teacher are unknown to him and the rest of the narrators are trustworthy. Al-Albani grades it da'if, weak (Da'if al-Jami' 3030, on dorar). It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The report turns a farm animal into an amulet. Owning a rooster of the right colour is said to guard a household against devils, sorcerers and soothsayers, three threats the tradition treats as real. Nothing is required of the owner but possession; the protection comes from the bird.

Al-Bayhaqi placed the report in Shu'ab al-Iman, 'The Branches of Faith', a work on the beliefs and practices that make up faith. His one critical remark on the page is aimed at the Jabir chain, and even there he does not reject the idea: he says the report is better attested as mursal, a Successor quoting the Prophet without naming the Companion. He judged the white-rooster tradition worth keeping.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this report is weak: al-Albani grades it so, and the editor of the Shu'ab names two unknown narrators in the chain. Al-Bayhaqi himself called the companion report munkar. No obligation or belief can rest on it, and it is not in the six canonical books.

Why it fails

The response is right, and this entry claims no more than that al-Bayhaqi preserved the report. Its value is as evidence of what circulated as prophetic teaching and what a major scholar thought worth recording among the branches of faith.

The chain is weak; the outlook is not peculiar to it. The editor's note on the same page cites a report of a cosmic rooster whose feet are in the lowest earth and whose crest is under the Throne, crowing at the times of prayer, which Ibn al-Jawzi called fabricated. The idea that roosters keep the hours of prayer and stand guard against the unseen ran through the tradition, and this report gives it its most practical form.

Check it yourself

Abd Allah b. Amr: frogs' croaking is praise of Allah, and the bat asked to drown the destroyers of Jerusalem Animals Strange / Obscure Science Basic al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 19382
"Do not kill frogs, for their croaking is glorification [of Allah]; and do not kill the bat, for when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed it said: 'My Lord, give me power over the sea, so that I may drown them.'"

What the hadith says

These are the words of the Companion Abd Allah b. Amr b. al-As, not attributed to the Prophet. Al-Bayhaqi records them in al-Sunan al-Kubra 19382 and says: 'These two are mawquf [stopping at the Companion] concerning the bat, and their chain is sahih.' He then uses them as legal evidence: an animal one is forbidden to kill is forbidden to eat, since if it were lawful it would have been slaughtered rather than protected. Ibn Hajar comments that even if the chain is sound, Abd Allah b. Amr used to take material from the Isra'iliyyat, the lore of the Jews and Christians; al-Shinqiti calls it sound and of the standing of a report from the Prophet (both on dorar). It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Two claims about the natural world are made as facts. A frog's croak is tasbih, the glorification of God, and that is the reason not to kill it. A bat spoke to God when Bayt al-Maqdis, the Temple in Jerusalem, was destroyed, and asked for control of the sea so that it could drown the destroyers. Neither is offered as a parable.

The claims do not stay in the realm of piety. Al-Bayhaqi, with a chain he calls sound, turns them into dietary law: frogs and bats may not be killed, so they may not be eaten. Al-Shinqiti goes further and gives the Companion's words the force of the Prophet's, on the principle that a Companion would not speak of the unseen from his own opinion. Animal folklore thus becomes evidence for what Muslims may eat.

The Muslim response

Muslims point out that this is a Companion's statement, and that Ibn Hajar already explained its source: Abd Allah b. Amr was known for relaying Isra'iliyyat, which Muslims are not obliged to believe. As for the frog, the Quran says that 'there is nothing that does not glorify Him with praise, but you do not understand their glorification' (Q 17:44), so the idea that animals praise God is not strange in Islamic belief.

Why it fails

Ibn Hajar's answer is honest, but it does not undo what al-Bayhaqi did with the report: it was cited as legal proof, on a sound chain, in one of the major works of Shafi'i hadith law. Al-Shinqiti, for his part, gave the words the standing of the Prophet's. The scholars did not agree that this was folklore to be set aside.

Q 17:44 says all things glorify God in a way humans do not understand. This report goes beyond it: it identifies the frog's croak as that glorification, and gives the bat a speech, a historical setting and a wish to drown people. That is not a general theology of creation; it is a story, and a story was allowed to settle a point of law.

Check it yourself

Fast seven days of Rajab and the seven gates of Hell are shut; Noah's Ark sailed in Rajab Ritual Absurdities Paradise Hell Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 3520
"Whoever fasts seven days [of Rajab], the seven gates of Hell are locked against him; whoever fasts eight days, the eight gates of Paradise are opened for him."

What the hadith says

The report is attributed to the Prophet through Abd al-Aziz b. Sa'id from his father. It promises that one day's fast in Rajab is like a year's fasting; seven days shut the seven gates of Hell; eight open the eight gates of Paradise; ten mean that Allah grants whatever is asked; fifteen bring a call from heaven that past sins are forgiven. It adds that in Rajab Noah was carried in the Ark, fasted and told those with him to fast, and the Ark sailed for six months. Al-Bayhaqi gives it in Shu'ab al-Iman 3520 and then remarks: 'I have another hadith mentioning each day of Rajab, and it is a fabricated hadith; I did not include it.' The editor grades this chain da'if: Uthman b. Matar is weak and Abd al-Ghafur is matruk, abandoned (footnote), as al-Haythami also says. Al-Albani calls it mawdu', fabricated, and Ibn Hajar batil, false (on dorar).

Why this is a problem

The rewards are fixed by arithmetic and matched to the furniture of the afterlife: seven days for Hell's seven gates, eight for Paradise's eight. Noah's flood is placed in Rajab to give the month a sacred history. Later critics call it fabricated or false, yet al-Bayhaqi included it in his book on the branches of faith, while leaving out a day-by-day version only because that one was, in his words, fabricated.

On the same page al-Bayhaqi gives the Successor Abu Qilaba's statement that 'in Paradise there is a palace for those who fast Rajab', and argues that although it stops at Abu Qilaba, 'a man like him would only say that from a report from someone above him who receives revelation.' The editor could not identify two of its narrators. So the great Shafi'i traditionist treated an unsourced promise of a palace as evidence of something revealed.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars reject these reports. Darul Uloom Deoband states that hadiths on the virtues of fasting in Rajab 'have been termed fabricated by the scholars of Hadith', so it is not lawful to act on them (fatwa via islamqa.org). A note quoted by the editor of the Shu'ab says that no prohibition or recommendation of fasting Rajab in particular is established, though fasting in general is recommended, as is fasting in the sacred months, of which Rajab is one.

Why it fails

The response is right about this report, and this entry presents it only as something al-Bayhaqi chose to preserve. The criticism is of the collector and the culture around him: he could tell that one Rajab report was fabricated and drop it, yet he kept this one, carried by an abandoned narrator, and argued that a Successor's palace in Paradise for Rajab fasters must ultimately come from revelation.

That the Deoband fatwa was needed at all shows how far such reports travelled. The question it answers quotes the same promises, seven gates of Hell and eight of Paradise, and asks whether they may be acted on.

Check it yourself

'The one who has intercourse with his hand' is among seven Allah will not look at, and 'will come on Resurrection Day with his hand pregnant' Sexual Issues Strange / Obscure Hell Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 5087
"Seven whom Allah will not look at on the Day of Resurrection, nor purify, nor gather with the worlds ... the one who has intercourse with his hand, the doer and the one done to ... [Anas:] The one who has intercourse with his hand will come on the Day of Resurrection with his hand pregnant."

What the hadith says

In the chapter on the prohibition of unlawful sex in his book on the branches of faith, al-Bayhaqi gives a report in which Anas b. Malik attributes to the Prophet a list of seven whom Allah will not look at or purify on the Day of Resurrection, and whom He will put into the Fire first among those who enter it, 'unless they repent' (said three times): 'the one who has intercourse with his hand (al-nakih yadahu), the doer and the one done to, the habitual wine-drinker, the one who beats his parents until they cry for help, the one who harms his neighbours until they curse him, and the one who has intercourse with his neighbour's wife' (Shu'ab al-Iman 5087). Al-Bayhaqi remarks that only Maslama b. Ja'far transmits it this way, then quotes al-Bukhari's al-Tarikh, where the same chain ends with Anas's own words: 'The one who has intercourse with his hand will come on the Day of Resurrection with his hand pregnant' (vol. 7 p. 330). That line is Anas's, not the Prophet's. The editor grades the report weak, with an unknown narrator, and quotes Ibn Kathir ('gharib, its chain has someone unknown'), Ibn al-Jawzi ('not sound from the Messenger of Allah; neither Hassan nor Maslama is known'), al-Dhahabi and al-Albani (da'if, al-Da'ifa 319); Ibn al-Jawzi's verdict is also on dorar. It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Masturbation is described with the verb for intercourse and set in a list beside beating one's parents and sleeping with a neighbour's wife. The punishment imagined for it is a hand that arrives at the Judgment pregnant, as if the act were a sexual union that produces offspring. This is not a fringe pamphlet: the chain was recorded by al-Bukhari in his history of narrators and copied by al-Bayhaqi into a book meant to set out the branches of faith.

No critic defends the chain, and the editor quotes four who reject it. Its interest is what it shows about the tradition: a question on which the Prophet's sound sayings are silent was given a prophetic answer and an image of the afterlife, and the image travelled through the great collectors' books for centuries before modern editors labelled it weak.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak and nobody relies on it. The prohibition of masturbation is argued from the Quran instead: IslamQA cites al-Shafi'i's reading of Q23:5-7, which praises those who guard their private parts and calls 'whoever seeks beyond that' transgressors, and the Prophet's advice in Bukhari 5066 that young men who cannot marry should fast.

Why it fails

On the grading the response is right, and this entry is Basic for that reason. But the replacement argument has its own cost. The verse that is meant to forbid masturbation makes its exception in Q23:6: 'except from their wives or those their right hands possess'. The text that is cited to close off solitary relief is the same text that permits sex with slave women, and the ban itself is an inference from 'whoever seeks beyond that', not a statement. The weak hadith fills a silence: the Quran never names the act.

Check it yourself

'Seek good from those with beautiful faces' Strange / Obscure Moral Problems Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 3263
"Seek good from those with beautiful faces."

What the hadith says

In the section on refraining from begging, al-Bayhaqi records twice, through Jabra bint Muhammad b. Thabit b. Siba' from her father, that A'isha reported the Prophet as saying: 'Seek good from those with beautiful faces' (Shu'ab al-Iman 3263 and 3264). Placed under begging, 'good' here means favours and help with one's needs. The editor grades 3263 weak, because Jabra is unknown, and 3264 wah (very feeble), because Khalid b. Abd al-Rahman al-Makhzumi was abandoned. He notes al-Haythami's remark that it contains people he did not know and that Ibn al-Jawzi put it among fabricated reports, though he himself says it has other routes and supporting reports. The same saying is in Musnad Abu Ya'la 4759, where Husayn Salim Asad grades the chain da'if jiddan, very weak. On dorar, Ahmad b. Hanbal calls it kadhib, a lie, al-Dhahabi batil, false, and al-Saghani mawdu', fabricated, though al-Suyuti (al-La'ali al-Masnu'a 2/81) calls A'isha's version hasan sahih. It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The advice is practical: when you need help, go to the good-looking. It assumes that a handsome face is a sign of a generous heart, a prejudice as old as the market-place, and dresses it as the instruction of a prophet.

The critics' verdicts are harsh, but the saying was not marginal. The editor's own footnote lists it in al-Bukhari's history of narrators, in Ibn Abi al-Dunya's book on meeting people's needs, in Abu Ya'la's Musnad and in Abu al-Shaykh's book of proverbs, before al-Bayhaqi recorded it twice. A modern editor still writes that it has other routes and supporting reports. A saying that Ahmad called a lie kept a place in the books for a thousand years.

The Muslim response

Muslims point out that the hadith critics themselves rejected it. Ahmad called it a lie, al-Dhahabi called it false and al-Saghani listed it as fabricated (dorar), so it is no part of the religion. Its place in the books shows the collectors recording what was in circulation, not endorsing it.

Why it fails

The response is right that most critics reject it, though al-Suyuti defended A'isha's version, and this entry is Basic. What the case shows is how a fabricated saying travels: once it has a chain, it is copied from collection to collection, each copy giving it a fresh appearance of attestation. The tradition's only defence is the critic who labels it later, and the label does not travel with the saying when it is repeated.

Check it yourself

'Whoever eats clay has as good as helped kill himself': al-Bayhaqi says none of these reports is sound Science Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 19719
"Whoever eats clay, it is as though he helped to kill himself."

What the hadith says

Al-Bayhaqi heads the chapter: 'What has come about eating clay: hadiths forbidding it have been narrated, none of which is sound' (chapter heading). He then gives two of them anyway. In 19718, Ibn Abbas attributes to the Prophet: 'Whoever indulges in eating clay has helped against himself'; al-Bayhaqi says its narrator Abd Allah b. Marwan is unknown. In 19719, Abu Hurayra attributes to him the line quoted above; al-Bayhaqi quotes Ibn Adi that only Abd al-Malik b. Mihran transmits it from Suhayl and that he is unknown, and adds: 'Even if this were sound, it would not show prohibition, only that eating much of it is disliked; eating much of it, or of anything else, until it harms the body is forbidden.' Ibn al-Jawzi placed it among fabricated reports, laysa yasihh (dorar). It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The interest here is not clay. Eating earth is a recognised condition, and a warning against it would be sensible advice. The interest is that someone thought sensible advice needed the Prophet's name, and that it was produced more than once: al-Bayhaqi speaks of 'hadiths' forbidding it, in the plural, through narrators nobody could identify.

Al-Bayhaqi exposes them in his own heading and still transmits them in a book of legal proofs. The reports show the scale of the problem the hadith critics faced: on a matter as small as clay-eating, several prophetic rulings were in circulation, and the critics could authenticate none of them.

The Muslim response

Al-Bayhaqi gives the answer himself on the same page: none of these reports is sound, and even if one were, it would only discourage eating so much that it harms the body. No Muslim is bound by them, and the critics did their job.

Why it fails

The response is correct, and this entry is Basic. It is offered as a window on the tradition, not as a charge against Muslim doctrine. The critics caught these reports because their narrators were unknown. Their method rests mainly on chains, so a report on a trivial matter with unknown men in it is easy to reject; the same method can say little about a report whose chain looks clean.

Check it yourself

Abd Allah b. Amr: whoever keeps Nawruz and Mihrajan in the lands of the non-Arabs until he dies 'will be gathered with them on the Day of Resurrection' Disbelievers Eschatology Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18864
"Whoever settles in the lands of the non-Arabs, keeps their Nawruz and their Mihrajan and imitates them until he dies in that state will be gathered with them on the Day of Resurrection."

What the hadith says

Al-Bayhaqi puts this in a chapter titled 'The dislike of entering upon the protected non-Muslims in their churches, and of imitating them on the day of their Nawruz and their Mihrajan'. Nawruz is the Persian New Year and Mihrajan an autumn festival. In 18864 the Companion Abd Allah b. Amr b. al-As says the words quoted above; al-Bayhaqi adds that Yahya b. Sa'id, Ibn Abi Adi, Ghundar and Abd al-Wahhab all transmit it from Awf as Abd Allah b. Amr's own saying. 18863 gives the same words by another chain, with al-Khattabi's note that the reading bana, 'settles' (literally 'builds'), is correct. It is a Companion's statement, not the Prophet's. Ibn Taymiyya (Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim 1/513) and Ibn al-Qayyim (Ahkam Ahl al-Dhimma) both call its chain sahih (dorar). It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The penalty is not a fine or a rebuke. It is a person's eternal company: whoever keeps these festivals and imitates the non-Arabs until death will be raised among them, the non-Muslims, on the Day of Resurrection. The two festivals are seasonal celebrations, a New Year at the spring equinox and an autumn feast, and the text makes keeping them a matter of where one stands at the Judgment.

Nor is this an obscure opinion. Al-Bayhaqi turned it into a chapter of law, and Ibn Taymiyya, who graded the chain sound, uses it in his book against imitating non-Muslims. Nawruz is still kept by Muslims across Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Kurdish regions; on this Companion's words, read as these scholars read them, those who keep it in that way until death are gathered with the unbelievers.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this is one Companion's view, not a saying of the Prophet, and that it carries a heavy condition: the person must settle among the non-Arabs, imitate them, and die in that state. Muslims who keep Nawruz say it is a cultural and seasonal celebration with no religious content, so it is not the imitation the report has in mind.

Why it fails

The condition does not soften the content, because the festivals are named as the substance of the imitation; a person who keeps Nawruz is doing exactly what the text describes. The 'cultural, not religious' distinction is the defence of Muslims who celebrate it, but it is not in the report, and the scholars who graded it sound read it the other way. Ibn Taymiyya and al-Bayhaqi built law on it.

That it is 'only' a Companion's view also cuts less than it seems. Sunni scholarship generally treats a Companion's word on the unseen, such as who is gathered with whom at the Resurrection, as something he would not say from his own opinion, though many scholars apply that rule cautiously to Abd Allah b. Amr, who is known to have read the books of the People of the Book. The report stands, graded sound, as part of the case against sharing other people's festivals.

Check it yourself

Umar: 'No muhallil and no man it is done for will be brought to me but I will stone them both' Hudud Women Governance Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 14191
"No muhallil and no man for whom it is done will be brought to me but I will stone them both."

What the hadith says

Under the Quran (Q2:230), a woman divorced three times may not return to her husband 'until she marries a husband other than him'. The muhallil is a man who marries her only so that she can then go back; the muhallal lahu is the first husband for whom it is done. The Prophet cursed both (Abu Dawud 2076). In the chapter on the muhallil's marriage, al-Bayhaqi records through Qabisa b. Jabir that the caliph Umar went further: he would stone them both (14191). This is Umar's threat, not the Prophet's ruling, and no report says he carried it out. Ibn Taymiyya calls it well known and preserved from Umar, and Ibn al-Qayyim calls it sound from him (dorar). The stoning threat is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Stoning is the penalty for adultery by a married person. Umar applies it to a marriage contracted openly, because of what the men intended. The woman who must pass through a second husband's bed before she can go home is the one person the threat does not mention.

The arrangement exists because of the Quran's own rule. A man pronounces divorce three times, perhaps in anger; the remedy is that his wife must marry and be divorced by someone else. When men found a way to make that remedy painless, the Prophet cursed it and his successor threatened death by stoning for it. The law punishes the workaround with the harshest penalty it has, and leaves the rule that created it untouched.

The Muslim response

IslamQA quotes Umar's oath approvingly as proof that tahlil marriage is forbidden and invalid. It does not make the woman lawful to her first husband, whether the divorce was stipulated or only privately intended, and the page calls such a marriage zina. Umar's threat is therefore a deterrent consistent with the Prophet's curse.

Why it fails

The response confirms the problem rather than answering it. If a marriage is zina whenever the husband privately intends to divorce, then on Umar's words a man's undisclosed intention is enough to make him liable to stoning. No court can see an intention, which may be why no case of the punishment is reported; but the threat is quoted today, by a leading fatwa site, as sound law.

The response also says nothing about the woman. In the scheme Q2:230 sets up, she bears the consequence of her husband's words, and the jurists' only concern is that her second marriage must be a real one.

Check it yourself

Ammar reviled the Prophet and praised the idols under torture; Muhammad: 'If they return, do it again' Apostasy & Blasphemy Prophetic Character Moral Problems Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 16896
"'How do you find your heart?' He said: 'At rest in faith.' He said: 'If they return, then do it again.'"

What the hadith says

In the chapter 'One compelled into apostasy', Abu Ubayda b. Muhammad b. Ammar b. Yasir reports from his father that the polytheists seized Ammar and would not let him go until he reviled the Prophet and spoke well of their gods. When Ammar came to the Prophet he was asked, 'What is behind you?' 'Evil, Messenger of Allah. I was not let go until I spoke against you and spoke well of their gods.' The Prophet asked how he found his heart and, told it was at rest in faith, said: 'If they return, then do it again' (16896). The narrator, Ammar's son, was not present, so the chain is probably mursal (missing a link). On dorar, al-Hakim (al-Mustadrak 3405) calls it sound on the conditions of al-Bukhari and Muslim; Ibn Hajar (Fath al-Bari 12/327) calls it mursal with trustworthy narrators; al-Albani (Fiqh al-Sira 103-104) doubts this account because it is mursal ('if not mu'dal') and says only the verse's revelation about Ammar is sound. It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

That speech under torture is excused is the Quran's own position (Q16:106: 'except one who is compelled while his heart is at rest in faith'), and nobody should blame a tortured man. What this report adds is the Prophet's instruction for next time. He does not say 'Allah has forgiven you'; he says 'if they return, do it again': revile me again, praise the idols again, provided the heart stays firm. Ibn Abbas, later in the same chapter, defines the permitted concealment as 'speaking with the tongue while the heart is at rest in faith' (16900).

Set beside the law of apostasy, the asymmetry is plain. A Muslim may deny the faith with his tongue to save his life, and keep it in his heart; a Muslim who leaves the faith in his heart and says so openly is to be killed: 'Whoever changes his religion, kill him' (Bukhari 6922). Outward words count for nothing when they protect a believer, and for everything when they reveal an unbeliever.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report simply applies Q16:106, which excuses words spoken under compulsion. It is not a general licence to lie. Ibn Abbas, in the same chapter, says that one compelled who speaks with his tongue while his heart holds to faith 'is not at fault', because Allah judges people by what their hearts hold (16899), and that this concealment never extends to killing or to sin (16900).

Why it fails

The response is right that the report concerns torture and that the Quran already allows it. The point of this entry is narrower. The permission is one-way: it protects believers from consequences for what they say, while the same tradition puts unbelievers to death for what they say. And the wording 'do it again', the line that turns an excuse into a standing instruction, is the part al-Albani doubts. It survives in al-Bayhaqi's book of legal proofs and was graded sound by al-Hakim.

Check it yourself

Umar: Arab Christians 'are not People of the Book ... I will not leave them until they become Muslim or I strike their necks' Disbelievers Warfare & Jihad Governance Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18798
"The Christians of the Arabs are not People of the Book, their slaughtered animals are not lawful for us, and I will not leave them until they become Muslim or I strike their necks."

What the hadith says

In the chapter on the slaughtered animals of the Christians of Banu Taghlib, al-Bayhaqi records through al-Shafi'i, from his teacher Ibrahim b. Muhammad, from Abd Allah b. Dinar, from Sa'd al-Jari or Abd Allah b. Sa'd, Umar's client, that Umar said the words quoted above (18798). Al-Shafi'i comments: 'We refrained from forcing them into Islam or striking their necks only because the Messenger of Allah took jizya from the Christians of the Arabs, and Umar, Uthman and Ali let them remain.' But because Umar said this, he goes on, marrying their women is not lawful for Muslims, since Allah permitted only the women of the People of the Book to whom it was revealed. In the next report Ali, asked about Taghlib's slaughtered animals, says: 'Do not eat it, for they have held on to nothing of their religion except drinking wine' (18799). No critic's verdict on Umar's report was located; Ali's report is graded sound by Ibn Hajar (Fath al-Bari 9/553) and by al-Bayhaqi in Ma'rifat al-Sunan (dorar). Neither is in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The Quran gives Christians the status of People of the Book: their food is lawful to Muslims and their women may be married. Umar takes that status away from Christians who are Arabs. The faith is the same; the ancestry is different. Al-Shafi'i explains the reasoning: the permission covers only those 'to whom it was revealed', and the Book was not revealed to the Arabs. For Umar and al-Shafi'i, a Christian's legal standing depended on his descent.

Umar's remedy is conversion or death. By al-Shafi'i's account it was not applied, but his reason is not that Islam forbids forcing faith on anyone. It is precedent: the Prophet took jizya from Arab Christians and the caliphs let them stay. Ali's verdict on their religion, graded sound, is that nothing of it remains except wine.

The Muslim response

Al-Shafi'i gives the answer on the same page: Umar's words were not put into practice. The Prophet took jizya from Arab Christians, and Umar, Uthman and Ali all left them in their religion. The Christians of Taghlib were never forced into Islam.

Why it fails

The response confirms that the threat was not carried out, and this entry does not claim it was. But al-Shafi'i keeps Umar's premise. He accepts that Arab Christians are not People of the Book for the purposes of marriage, and builds a rule of law on Umar's words. The Arab Christians escaped the sword by precedent, while their faith was given a lower legal standing than the same faith held by non-Arabs.

Umar's own statement also shows how a ruler of the early community thought about religious minorities: those he did not count as People of the Book were to choose between Islam and the sword. No grading of the chain was located, so it should be read as al-Shafi'i transmitted it, not as a proven saying.

Check it yourself

Ibn Abbas: 'The duff is forbidden, instruments are forbidden, the kuba is forbidden, the pipe is forbidden' Contradictions Ritual Absurdities Basic al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 21000
"The duff is forbidden, the instruments are forbidden, the kuba is forbidden, and the pipe is forbidden."

What the hadith says

In the chapter 'Censure of amusements: instruments, pipes and the like', al-Bayhaqi records through Sa'id b. Mansur, Abu Awana, Abd al-Karim al-Jazari and Abu Hashim al-Kufi that Ibn Abbas said the words quoted above (21000). The duff is the frame drum; ma'azif are instruments generally; the kuba is usually explained as a small drum; the mizmar is a pipe. These are Ibn Abbas's own words, not the Prophet's. On dorar, al-Albani (Tahrim Alat al-Tarab) calls the chain sound if Abu Hashim is al-Sinjari, while al-Dhahabi (al-Muhadhdhab) says Abu Hashim is unknown. It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Ibn Abbas forbids the duff without exception. The canonical collections show it played in the Prophet's presence. At the wedding of al-Rubayyi' bint Mu'awwidh, 'our little girls started beating the duff' while the Prophet sat on her bed, and he told them to carry on with their verses (Bukhari 5147). On the days of Mina two girls were beating the duff in A'isha's house; when Abu Bakr scolded them, the Prophet said, 'Leave them, for these days are the days of Eid' (Bukhari 987).

So, if the report is his, either one of the best-known Companion jurists did not know what the Prophet had allowed, or he knew and forbade it anyway. Al-Albani, the leading Salafi hadith scholar of the twentieth century, cites the report, with a conditional approval of its chain, in a book whose title means 'The prohibition of instruments of amusement'.

The Muslim response

Muslims reconcile the texts by treating the permission as an exception. IslamQA says the duff may be beaten at Eid, at weddings and on a traveller's return, by women only, and that outside those occasions 'the principle remains that it is haraam'; men who play it are imitating women. Another IslamQA answer cites Ibn Abbas and Ibn Mas'ud for the view that music is forbidden.

Why it fails

The reconciliation is the jurists' construction, not Ibn Abbas's. His statement has no exceptions, and no canonical report forbids the duff by name: they show the duff at two celebrations and the Prophet defending it. Turning 'the players were girls' into 'only women may play' and 'it was played at a wedding and at Eid' into 'only then' is how a permission becomes a rule of restriction.

The chain is also uncertain, which is why this entry is Basic. But the report shows how Companion opinion, set beside a general saying on instruments, was used to make prohibition the default for the duff.

Check it yourself

Ali on chess players: 'What are these images to which you are devoted?' Touching a live coal 'is better than touching them' Strange / Obscure Ritual Absurdities Basic al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 20930
"'What are these images to which you are devoted?' For him to touch a live coal until it goes out is better for him than to touch them."

What the hadith says

In a chapter al-Bayhaqi titles 'The disagreement about playing chess', Maysara b. Habib reports that Ali passed people playing chess and said, in the words of Abraham to his idol-worshipping people (Q21:52), 'What are these images to which you are devoted?' (20929). In al-Asbagh b. Nubata's version Ali adds: 'For him to touch a live coal until it goes out is better for him than to touch them' (20930). A third report has Ali say: 'The chess player is the greatest of liars: one of them says "I killed", and he did not kill' (20931). These are Ali's words, not the Prophet's. Al-Albani (Irwa' al-Ghalil 8/288) grades the coal version's chain very weak (dorar); Ibn Hazm (al-Muhalla 9/61) calls one chain of the coal version broken (munqati'); for the shorter 'images' report, Ibn al-Qayyim (al-Furusiyya 310) and Ibn Hazm (al-Muhalla 9/63) call it sound, though Ahmad said Maysara never met Ali (dorar). It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The verse is Abraham's challenge to people bowing before statues. Ali, as reported, turns it on men moving pieces across a board: carved chessmen become idols and the players idol-worshippers, and touching fire is better than touching them. The third report counts a move in a game as a lie, because the player says 'I killed' when nobody died.

The reasoning matters more than the game. A pastime is condemned by treating its pieces as images and its words as false statements, and Ibn al-Qayyim, one of the most influential Hanbali scholars, graded the report sound. The canonical tradition condemns a different board game, nard, in equally vivid terms: whoever plays it is 'like one who dyed his hand with the flesh and blood of swine' (Muslim 2260).

The Muslim response

Al-Bayhaqi's own chapter title admits that scholars disagreed about chess. Those who allow it say Ali's reports are weak: al-Albani grades the coal version very weak and Ibn Hazm calls it broken. The canonical condemnation is of nard, not chess.

Why it fails

The response is right that the chains are poor, and this entry is Basic. What the reports show is a habit of argument: an anti-idolatry verse applied to a board game, and a game move treated as a lie. Ibn al-Qayyim accepted the 'images' report as sound, and al-Bayhaqi recorded three versions in his book of legal proofs.

Check it yourself

'The sleep of the fasting person is worship, his silence is glorification': the fasting saying al-Bayhaqi weakens Ritual Absurdities Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 3652
"The sleep of the fasting person is worship, his silence is glorification, his deeds are multiplied, his supplication is answered, and his sin is forgiven."

What the hadith says

In a section of reports and stories about fasting, al-Bayhaqi gives this saying three times, each attributed to the Prophet through Abd Allah b. Abi Awfa (Shu'ab al-Iman 3652, 3653, 3654), and comments: 'Ma'ruf b. Hassan is weak, and Sulayman b. Amr al-Nakha'i is weaker than him.' The editor grades all three chains weak. The first contains Khalaf b. Yahya, of whom Abu Hatim said 'abandoned in hadith; he was a liar'. The second runs through Sulayman b. Amr, of whom Ahmad said 'he used to forge hadith' and Ibn Adi 'they agree that he forged hadith'. The editor adds that al-Suyuti included it in al-Jami' al-Saghir and that al-Albani grades it weak. On dorar, al-Iraqi calls its chain weak and al-Albani (al-Da'ifa 4696) weak. It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The saying promises reward for sleep: the fasting person's sleep counts as worship and his silence as glorification of God. Its chains run through a man called a liar and a man the critics agreed was a forger, and al-Bayhaqi, after recording it three times, ranks its transmitters as weak and weaker.

Yet it passed from al-Bayhaqi into al-Suyuti's al-Jami' al-Saghir, a widely used compendium of the Prophet's sayings (where al-Suyuti marks it weak), which is how a line carried by a liar and an accused forger, promising reward for the fasting person's sleep, came to be quoted as the Prophet's.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars say it is weak and must not be attributed to the Prophet; al-Albani lists it among weak hadiths (dorar). The merit of fasting rests on sound hadiths, not on this one.

Why it fails

The response is right, and this entry is Basic. Its point is the path the saying took. A report whose second chain runs through an agreed forger was preserved by al-Bayhaqi in three versions and taken by al-Suyuti, with a weak mark, into a popular collection. The critics' verdicts sit in footnotes and specialist books; the saying itself is what was passed on.

Check it yourself

Ali: when a free wife is married alongside a slave wife, 'this one has two-thirds and that one one-third' of his time Slavery & Captives Women Basic al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 14750
"When a free woman is married in addition to a slave woman, this one has two-thirds and this one one-third."

What the hadith says

Al-Bayhaqi titles the chapter: 'A free man marries a free woman in addition to a slave woman: he gives the free woman two days and the slave woman one.' He then records, through al-Minhal b. Amr and Abbad b. Abd Allah al-Asadi, that Ali said the words quoted above; Sa'id b. al-Musayyib said the same (14750-14751). The Successor Sulayman b. Yasar said: 'It is of the sunna that the free woman, if she stays on with a co-wife, has two days and the slave woman one day' (14752). These are the rulings of Ali and two Successors, not a saying of the Prophet; 'of the sunna' is Sulayman's claim. The slave woman here is a wife, married with her owner's permission, not a concubine. On dorar, al-Albani (Irwa' al-Ghalil 7/86) grades Ali's chain weak, and al-Zayla'i notes that al-Minhal was criticised and Abbad is weak. It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

A husband owes his wives a fair share of his time. Here the share is fixed by legal status: the slave wife gets half what the free wife gets, one day in three. Marriage does not make her an equal wife; her servitude follows her into it and halves her claim on her husband.

The weak chain does not make this a stray opinion. Al-Bayhaqi states the rule in his chapter heading as settled law, Sa'id b. al-Musayyib, the leading jurist of Medina in his generation, gives the same ruling, and Sulayman b. Yasar calls it the sunna.

The Muslim response

One juristic line of reasoning is that the Quran itself halves a married slave woman's punishment (Q4:25), so halving her other entitlements follows the same principle. No modern statement of this defence with a link was located.

Why it fails

The Quran's halving concerns punishment for adultery. Extending it to the time a husband spends with his wife turns a reduced penalty into a reduced personhood: the same woman, married to the same man, counts for half because she is owned by someone else. The defence explains the rule but does not justify it.

Ali's report is weak, and this entry is Basic. But the rule did not depend on it; it rests on Successors' rulings that al-Bayhaqi records and on a chapter heading that states it as law.

Check it yourself

'I will destroy forty thousand of the best of your people': God to Joshua, because the righteous ate with the wicked Moral Problems Allah's Character Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 8982
"I am going to destroy one hundred thousand of your people: forty thousand of their best and sixty thousand of their worst ... They go in to the wicked, eat with them and drink with them, and do not become angry with My anger."

What the hadith says

In the section on keeping away from wrongdoers, al-Bayhaqi records the Damascene transmitter al-Wadin b. Ata, who names no source: 'Allah revealed to Joshua son of Nun: I am going to destroy one hundred thousand of your people, forty thousand of their best and sixty thousand of their worst. He said: Lord, You destroy their worst, but why their best? He said: They go in to the wicked, eat with them and drink with them, and do not become angry with My anger' (Shu'ab al-Iman 8982). It is not a saying of the Prophet but a piece of lore about the Israelites. The editor grades the chain weak because al-Khadir b. Aban al-Hashimi is weak. No second source for the text was found, and it is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Forty thousand people whom God himself calls 'the best' are destroyed, not for anything they did to anyone, but because they shared meals with sinners and were not angry enough. Guilt is assigned by association and by failure of feeling, and the penalty is death on a massive scale.

Al-Bayhaqi does not record this as a curiosity. He uses it to illustrate a branch of faith, keeping away from wrongdoers, in a chapter whose next report has the ascetic Muhammad b. Wasi' saying that 'chewing reeds and swallowing dust is better than going near the ruler'. The lesson offered to the believer is that God's anger reaches those who keep company with the wicked, however good they are.

The Muslim response

Muslims would say that this is weak lore about the Israelites, relayed without a source by a later transmitter, and binding on no one. The related Quranic idea is Q8:25, a warning that a trial may come which 'will not strike those who have wronged among you exclusively'; the point is to urge believers to resist wrongdoing, not to celebrate the destruction of the righteous.

Why it fails

On the report itself the response is right, and this entry is Basic. But the verse it points to concedes the principle. Q8:25 tells believers to fear a punishment that will not fall only on the wrongdoers. The report simply puts numbers on that warning: forty thousand of the best alongside sixty thousand of the worst. A weak chain removes the numbers, not the idea.

Check it yourself

Ja'far al-Sadiq: women who lie with women are the 'People of al-Rass', and will be dressed in robes, crowns and boots of fire LGBTQ / Gender Hell Scripture Integrity Women Moderate al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 5080
"Yes: they are the women of the time of Tubba', the People of al-Rass ... A robe of fire will be cut for them, and a coat of fire, a belt of fire, a crown of fire, and two boots of fire."

What the hadith says

Two women who had read the Quran came to Ja'far b. Muhammad, Ja'far al-Sadiq, the Prophet's descendant and a leading scholar of Medina, and asked: 'Do you find a woman lying with a woman forbidden in the Book of Allah?' He said: 'Yes: they are the women who lived in the time of Tubba', the People of al-Rass (and every river and well is a rass).' A robe of fire will be cut for them, he said, and a coat, a belt, a crown and two boots of fire, and over that a coarse, rough, thick garment of fire. 'Teach this to your women,' Ja'far said (Shu'ab al-Iman 5080). The editor grades the chain la ba'sa bih, 'there is no harm in it'. Ibn Abi al-Dunya has the same report by the same chain, with the wording 'women's love for women' and 'seventy robes' (Dhamm al-Malahi 144). In the next report, graded weak, Ja'far's father Muhammad al-Baqir says Allah punished the women of Lot's people because 'the men sufficed with men and the women with women' (5081). These are Ja'far's and al-Baqir's words, not the Prophet's or the Quran's. The report is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The Quran names the People of al-Rass twice (Q25:38, Q50:12) in lists of destroyed nations and says nothing about their sin. Asked whether the Book forbids sex between women, Ja'far answers 'yes' by giving that unexplained name a sin and then describing its punishment piece by piece, from the crown to the boots. The answer is not in the Book; it is supplied by the exegete and then attributed to the Book.

The chain is acceptable by the editor's judgement, so this is a fair record of what an eminent early authority taught. For Shi'i Muslims Ja'far is an infallible Imam, so an identification like this, if accepted from him, carries more weight still. His instruction, 'teach this to your women', shows that the report was meant as instruction for ordinary believers, not as private speculation.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the exegetes gave several different identifications of the People of al-Rass, so this is one scholar's opinion, not the Quran's meaning. The prohibition of sex between women rests on other grounds.

Why it fails

That answer makes the problem sharper. Two women asked whether the Quran forbids what they were asking about, and a leading scholar told them it did, by attaching it to a name that, on the response's own account, nobody could identify with confidence. The certainty and the fiery wardrobe were built on one guess among several.

The editor grades the chain acceptable, and it appears in Ibn Abi al-Dunya's book and, through him, in al-Bayhaqi's. The report is a fair record of how the Quran's silences were filled in, and of who was taught to fear the result.

Check it yourself

'When men suffice with men and women with women': destruction, and stones from the sky LGBTQ / Gender Eschatology Women Moderate al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 5086
"If my community makes five things lawful, destruction is upon them: when mutual cursing appears, they drink wines, wear silk, take singing-girls, and men make do with men and women with women."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik attributes this to the Prophet in Shu'ab al-Iman 5086, and in two near-identical versions (5084-5085). Al-Bayhaqi comments: 'Its chain and the chain before it are not strong, but when they are joined together they gain strength.' In Abu Hurayra's version (5083), the Prophet swears that this world will not end until swallowing by the earth, transformation and pelting strike them, 'when you see women riding saddles, instruments multiply, false testimony spreads, wine is drunk openly, those who pray drink from the gold and silver vessels of the polytheists, and women make do with women and men with men; when you see that, beware of the pelting from heaven'; then he put his hand over his face. Al-Bayhaqi says only Sulayman b. Dawud transmits that version and he is weak. The editor grades 5086 and 5083 weak and 5084 'not strong'. Al-Albani nevertheless grades the 'five things' version hasan li-ghayrihi, acceptable through its supporting routes (Sahih al-Targhib 2386, dorar); al-Dhahabi calls the Abu Hurayra version, in al-Mustadrak, munkar (a rejected report) (dorar).

Why this is a problem

A canonical hadith already threatens this community with the earth swallowing it, transformation and pelting 'when singing slave-girls, music, and drinking intoxicants spread' (Tirmidhi 2212). It says nothing about same-sex relations. These versions add them to the list of sins that bring destruction on the whole community, and one adds 'women riding saddles'.

Al-Bayhaqi's comment shows how such additions survive. Each chain is weak; he says so; but joined together 'they gain strength'. Al-Albani applied the same method and accepted the 'five things', so readers who follow his gradings meet it as an authentic saying of the Prophet that ties a community's destruction to what men do with men and women with women.

The Muslim response

Muslims who follow al-Albani accept the 'five things' as hasan li-ghayrihi (dorar) and read it as a warning against open sin, not as a fixed prophecy of a particular punishment. The 'saddles' version is rejected as weak.

Why it fails

Reading it as a warning does not change who is warned or why. Collective destruction is threatened because some members of the community take same-sex partners, alongside drinking and wearing silk. Those who did none of it share the destruction.

The response is right that the saddles version is rejected, and that version is not the basis of this entry. The 'five things' version, each chain of which al-Bayhaqi himself calls not strong, has been accepted through the joining of weak routes, and it is that version that carries the same-sex clause.

Check it yourself

Ibn Sirin: 'No animal does the deed of Lot's people except the pig and the donkey' Science LGBTQ / Gender Animals Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 5018
"There is nothing among the animals that does the deed of Lot's people except the pig and the donkey."

What the hadith says

In the chapter on the prohibition of unlawful sex, al-Bayhaqi records through Urfut al-Abdi that he heard the Successor Muhammad b. Sirin (d. AD 729) say the words quoted above (Shu'ab al-Iman 5018). Ibn Abi al-Dunya has the same report by the same chain, spelling the name Urfuta (Dhamm al-Malahi 155). It is Ibn Sirin's own claim, not a saying of the Prophet. The editor says the chain contains a narrator he does not know, Urfut al-Abdi. No other critic's verdict was found, and it is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The claim is a statement about nature, and it is false. Same-sex sexual behaviour has been observed in over 1,500 animal species according to a 2019 paper in Nature Ecology and Evolution, among them bonobos, dolphins, penguins, sheep and giraffes (summary on Wikipedia).

The purpose of the remark is moral, not zoological. The two animals named were ones the audience already held in low regard; the pig is unclean in Islamic law. Linking same-sex acts to them was meant to shame. Both Ibn Abi al-Dunya and al-Bayhaqi recorded it in chapters condemning the act, so a false claim about animals was preserved as support for a moral ruling.

The Muslim response

Muslims would say this is a Successor's remark, carried by a narrator nobody can identify, and not revelation. No Muslim is obliged to believe it, and its error says nothing about the Quran or the Prophet.

Why it fails

The response is right, and this entry is Basic. It shows something about the collectors rather than the faith: two scholars who built books of moral instruction included a false claim about animals because it served the argument. Ibn Sirin was among the most respected Successors of Basra, and his name carried the claim.

Check it yourself

Mujahid: if the sodomite 'washed with every drop in the sky and every drop on earth, he would remain impure' LGBTQ / Gender Gross / Vile Ritual Absurdities Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 5020
"If the one who does that deed washed with every drop in the sky and every drop on the earth, he would not cease to be impure."

What the hadith says

In the chapter on the prohibition of unlawful sex, al-Bayhaqi records through Isma'il b. Kathir that the Successor Mujahid b. Jabr said: 'If the one who does that deed, meaning the deed of Lot's people, washed with every drop in the sky and every drop on the earth, he would not cease to be impure' (Shu'ab al-Iman 5020, ending on p. 288). Ibn Abi al-Dunya has the same words by the same chain (Dhamm al-Malahi 136). These are Mujahid's words, not the Prophet's. The editor gives no verdict on the chain, noting only that Isma'il b. Kathir is reliable, and no critic's grading of it was found. A similar saying attributed to the Prophet is called batil, false, by al-Sakhawi (al-Maqasid al-Hasana 403) and Mar'i al-Karmi (dorar). It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Najis, impure, is the word Islamic law uses for substances such as urine and pig's flesh. Mujahid applies it to a man, and says no amount of water could ever clean him. The impurity is not ritual, which washing removes, but permanent: a stain on the person.

The saying did not stay with Mujahid. A similar saying was attributed to the Prophet, and that version circulated widely enough for al-Sakhawi and Mar'i al-Karmi to list it among false sayings. A Successor's rhetoric became, for some, a prophetic verdict.

The Muslim response

Muslims would say this is a Successor's rhetorical condemnation, not a ruling, and that Islam teaches that sincere repentance is accepted for every sin. The prophetic version is rejected by the critics as false.

Why it fails

The response is right that the words are not the Prophet's, and this entry is Basic. But it shows the tone in which a leading early authority spoke of men who have sex with men: as people beyond cleansing. That rhetoric sits uneasily with the doctrine of repentance the response appeals to, and it was preserved by two collectors in their chapters on unlawful sex, where it served as moral instruction.

Check it yourself

Worshippers leave the Friday sermon for a caravan: 'Were it not for these, stones would have been aimed at them from the sky' Prophetic Character Ritual Absurdities Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman 6075
"Were it not for these, stones would have been aimed at them from the sky."

What the hadith says

Explaining Q62:11, the Successor Muqatil b. Hayyan says that while the Prophet stood giving the Friday sermon, Dihya al-Kalbi, a merchant who was not yet a Muslim, arrived with a caravan, and his family met it with drums and amusement. Most of the people left the mosque to look at the goods and the entertainment, leaving the Prophet standing with few. 'It reached me, and Allah knows best, that they did this three times, each time with a caravan arriving from Syria.' The Prophet said of those who had stayed: 'Were it not for these, stones would have been aimed at them from the sky', and the verse was revealed (Shu'ab al-Iman 6075). Muqatil was not present, so the report is mursal, missing its link to an eyewitness. The editor grades its chain to Muqatil la ba'sa bih, 'no harm in it', and notes that al-Suyuti attributes it to al-Bayhaqi alone. The walk-out itself is canonical; the threat of stones is not.

Why this is a problem

The canonical account is already striking. Jabir says that when a caravan arrived on a Friday, 'all the people left' except twelve men, and Allah revealed the verse (Bukhari 4899); in Tirmidhi's version the Prophet was standing delivering the sermon, and Abu Bakr and Umar were among the twelve (Tirmidhi 3311). The Quran itself records it: 'when they saw a transaction or a diversion, they rushed to it and left you standing.'

Muqatil's version adds two things: that it happened three times, and that the Prophet said his own congregation would have been stoned from heaven but for the few who stayed. The men threatened are the Companions, the generation whose collective integrity Sunni doctrine affirms.

The Muslim response

The sound version, in al-Bukhari and Muslim, has no threat of stones and no repetition, as the editor's own references show (same page). Muqatil's additions are mursal, partly introduced with 'it reached me', and are not relied on.

Why it fails

On the threat the response is right, and this entry is Basic. The canonical core it falls back on is not much more comfortable: all but twelve left the Prophet standing in the middle of the Friday sermon to see a caravan, and the Quran rebuked them for it. Al-Bayhaqi also chose to record the harsher version in his book on the branches of faith, where it illustrates the prohibition of amusements.

Check it yourself

Umar: 'Allah has given you their women and children ... men will be going to the women': do not sell the mothers, or a man may lie with his own kin unknowingly Slavery & Captives Sexual Issues Women Incest Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 21774
"I know that men will be going to the women; so any man to whom a woman of the non-Arabs bears a child, do not sell the mothers of your children, for if you do, a man may soon have intercourse with his own close kin without knowing it."

What the hadith says

In the chapter 'A man has intercourse with his slave woman by right of ownership and she bears him a child', Abd Allah b. Sa'id reports that his grandfather heard Umar say from the pulpit of the Messenger of Allah: 'O Muslims, Allah has given you as spoil, from the lands of the non-Arabs, of their women and their children what He did not give the Messenger of Allah or Abu Bakr. I know that men will be going to the women...', followed by the words quoted above (21774). The word for the kin he might lie with, harim, means the close relatives a man may not marry; the text does not explain how the mix-up would happen. No grading of this report was found, and no second source for its wording. In the same chapter, Ibn Umar reports Umar's ban: the mother of a master's child 'is not sold, given or inherited; her master enjoys her as long as he likes; when he dies she is free' (21764). Ibn Kathir calls Umar's ruling, in a similar wording, sound, and al-Bayhaqi says that attributing it to the Prophet is a gross error (dorar). Umar's sermon is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Umar speaks of the women and children of the conquered as a gift from God, larger than any the Prophet received, and he takes for granted that the new owners will have sex with the women. His concern is what happens after a captive bears her owner a child. If she is sold on, Umar warns, a man may end up having intercourse with a close relative without knowing it. The reason given for protecting the mothers is the men's risk of unknowing incest, not the women's consent or welfare.

It was a new rule. Jabir says: 'We sold mothers of children in the time of the Messenger of Allah and of Abu Bakr; when Umar was in power, he forbade us and we stopped' (Abu Dawud 3954). On Jabir's account, a slave woman who had borne her owner's child could be sold under the Prophet.

The Muslim response

Muslims present Umar's ban as a humane reform. A slave woman who bore her master a child could no longer be sold, given away or inherited, and she became free on his death, as Umar's ruling in 21764 says. Most jurists followed it, though al-Bayhaqi's next chapter records a disagreement (21791).

Why it fails

The reform was real, and it protected these women from being separated from their children by sale. But the same ruling that protects her says that 'her master enjoys her as long as he likes'; her freedom comes only with his death. And in this sermon the reason given is the men's risk of unknowing incest. The women of the conquered appear as spoil, as sexual property and as a hazard to lineage.

The response also has to explain why the Prophet allowed what Umar forbade. If selling a child's mother was wrong, the practice of the Prophet's lifetime allowed a wrong; if it was not wrong, the reform was a caliph's policy, not a moral principle of the faith.

Check it yourself

The women and children of Banu Qurayza were sold to polytheists in Tihama, Najd and on the road to Syria 'for horses, weapons, camels and money' Slavery & Captives Warfare & Jihad Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18328
"He sent the rest of the captives in thirds, a third to Tihama, a third to Najd and a third towards Syria, and they were sold for horses, weapons, camels and money."

What the hadith says

Under the chapter heading 'Selling captives to the people of shirk' (heading), al-Bayhaqi quotes al-Shafi'i: 'The Messenger of Allah took captive the women and children of Banu Qurayza and sold them to the polytheists. Abu al-Shahm the Jew bought a household from the Prophet, an old woman and her child, and the Messenger of Allah sent the rest of the captives in thirds, a third to Tihama, a third to Najd and a third towards Syria, and they were sold for horses, weapons, camels and money' (18328). He then gives Ibn Ishaq's account of Qurayza: the Prophet sent Sa'd b. Zayd of Banu Abd al-Ashhal with the Qurayza captives to Najd, 'and he bought horses and weapons for them with them' (18329). This is al-Shafi'i's and Ibn Ishaq's historical account, not a hadith with a chain back to an eyewitness, and no critic's grading of it was found. Al-Bayhaqi uses it as legal proof that captives may be sold to non-Muslims.

Why this is a problem

That Qurayza's men were killed and their women and children taken captive is canonical: Sa'd b. Mu'adh's judgment, which the Prophet accepted, was 'Kill their warriors and take their offspring as captives' (Bukhari 4121). This account says what happened to the captives next. They were divided into three groups and sent away to be sold to polytheists across Arabia and towards Syria, and the proceeds bought horses and weapons.

The women and children whose men had just been killed were exchanged for horses and weapons. Al-Shafi'i, founder of a school of law, states it as a fact of the Prophet's life, and al-Bayhaqi files it as the precedent for selling captives to unbelievers. Al-Shafi'i adds, in the same place, that the Prophet asked one of his Companions for an adult slave girl and used her to ransom two men.

The Muslim response

Muslim jurists cite the account for a legal point: captives may lawfully be sold, including to non-Muslims, as al-Bayhaqi's chapter heading states. It belongs to the laws of war of its time, when the enslavement and sale of captives were universal practice. No modern apologetic response with a link was located.

Why it fails

The jurists' use of it confirms rather than answers the problem: the report is not an embarrassment the tradition tried to hide, but a precedent it used to make law. That slavery was universal explains why the Prophet's contemporaries did it. It does not explain why a prophet whose example is meant for every age sold the women and children of the men just killed to polytheists for horses and weapons, nor why the jurists turned that into a rule.

The account comes from al-Shafi'i and Ibn Ishaq rather than a graded chain, and should be read as the early historical tradition, not as a proven hadith. But al-Bayhaqi and al-Shafi'i were not reluctant to repeat it.

Check it yourself

'Circumcision is a sunna for men and an honour for women' Women Sexual Issues Moderate al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 17565
"Circumcision is a sunna for men and an honour for women."

What the hadith says

In the chapter on the ruler who compels circumcision and on what has come about circumcision, al-Bayhaqi records Ibn Abbas attributing to the Prophet: 'Circumcision is a sunna for men and an honour (makruma) for women.' He comments: 'This chain is weak; what is preserved is that it is [Ibn Abbas's] own saying' (17565). He then gives Ibn Abbas's own version (17566), and the same words attributed to the Prophet by Usama, the father of Abu al-Malih (17567), and by Abu Ayyub (17568). Of these he says that al-Hajjaj b. Artat is not used as proof and that the Abu Ayyub route is broken. Ibn Abd al-Barr (al-Tamhid 21/59) likewise says it turns on al-Hajjaj, who is not proof (dorar). As the Prophet's saying it is weak; as Ibn Abbas's, al-Bayhaqi calls it the preserved form. This wording is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

For women, circumcision is called a makruma: an honourable, commendable act. The text does not define the cut, and this entry does not equate it with any particular modern practice. But it puts cutting girls' genitals on a scale of merit, and the scale has stayed in the law. IslamQA reports three juristic views, quotes al-Nawawi that 'the majority stated definitively that it is obligatory for both men and women', and itself concludes that most jurists hold it obligatory for both; the other views it records call it Sunnah for both sexes, or obligatory for males and 'Sunnah and good' for females.

The one canonical text on how women are cut is a woman who circumcised in Medina being told, 'Do not cut severely, as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband' (Abu Dawud 5271). Abu Dawud himself calls that report weak. The legal tradition still made the practice obligatory or commendable on the strength of these reports and others like them.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the 'honour' hadith is weak as a saying of the Prophet, as al-Bayhaqi himself says. IslamQA notes that scholars disagree about the grading of Abu Dawud 5271, some calling it weak and al-Albani calling it sound, and says that the prescription of female circumcision rests on other hadiths, not on that one. What is prescribed, Muslims say, is a minimal cut, not the mutilation the term evokes today.

Why it fails

The response does not deny the practice; it defends it on other grounds. The weakness of this chain removes the Prophet's name from the phrase, but al-Bayhaqi himself calls Ibn Abbas's version the preserved form, and the schools went further than 'honour': by IslamQA's own account, the majority held it obligatory for women. Whatever the extent of the cut, it is a procedure on girls who cannot consent, and by IslamQA's account most jurists made it a duty.

Check it yourself

'Not until he is circumcised': the uncircumcised man barred from the Hajj, his prayer and testimony rejected Ritual Absurdities Strange / Obscure Basic al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 17564
"About an uncircumcised man performing the pilgrimage to the House of Allah, he said: No, not until he is circumcised."

What the hadith says

Abu Barza al-Aslami says that the Prophet was asked about an uncircumcised man performing the pilgrimage to the House of Allah and said: 'No, not until he is circumcised' (17564). It comes through Abu Barza's granddaughter Munya bint Ubayd and Umm al-Aswad. On dorar, al-Albani (al-Da'ifa 5526) grades it weak, al-Dhahabi notes two unknown women in its chain, and Ibn al-Mundhir (al-Awsat 7/306) says it is not established. The same chapter has more. Ibn Abbas, through an unnamed man, 'disliked the slaughter of the uncircumcised' and said 'his prayer is not accepted and his testimony is not allowed' (17569). Ali reports finding in the scroll in the hilt of the Prophet's sword: 'The uncircumcised is not left in Islam until he is circumcised, even if he has reached eighty years' (17558); al-Bayhaqi notes that only the Prophet's family transmit it by this chain. Ali is also said not to have accepted the testimony of the uncircumcised, which al-Bayhaqi rejects because Hamza al-Jazari is abandoned (17572). These reports are not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

Taken together, the chapter shows how far circumcision was pushed. An uncircumcised man may not perform the Hajj; his prayer is not accepted; his testimony is not valid in court; his slaughtered animal is disliked; and a man of eighty is not to be left alone in Islam until he has been cut.

Al-Bayhaqi's own reading strengthens the point. His editor, on the Shu'ab al-Iman version of Ibn Abbas's 'the testimony of a man who is not circumcised is not accepted', notes that al-Bayhaqi took it to show that Ibn Abbas held circumcision obligatory, and that when he called it 'sunna' he meant the Prophet's binding practice (Shu'ab al-Iman 8274).

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that these reports are weak and that circumcision is not generally treated as a condition for the validity of the Hajj or of prayer. Even in al-Bayhaqi's collection, the jurist Hammad b. Abi Sulayman, asked about the uncircumcised man's slaughter, said there was no harm in it. No modern statement with a link was located.

Why it fails

The response is right that the reports are weak, and this entry is Basic. But the tradition preserved them in a chapter of legal proofs headed by the ruler's power to compel circumcision, and al-Bayhaqi read Ibn Abbas as making it obligatory. The line about the man of eighty was transmitted, as al-Bayhaqi notes, by the Prophet's own family.

Check it yourself

Ibn Umar passes a little girl singing: 'If Satan had left anyone alone, he would have left this one' Women Strange / Obscure Ritual Absurdities Basic al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 21009
"If Satan had left anyone alone, he would have left this one."

What the hadith says

In the chapter on the man or woman who makes singing a profession, al-Bayhaqi records Abd Allah b. Dinar: 'Ibn Umar passed a little girl who was singing, and said: If Satan had left anyone alone, he would have left this one' (21009). The word jariya can mean a girl or a slave girl, and the text does not say which; saghira means she was small. These are Ibn Umar's words, not the Prophet's. Al-Bukhari's al-Adab al-Mufrad has the same story, and al-Albani grades its chain hasan, good (Sahih al-Adab al-Mufrad 602, dorar). It is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

A small child singing is, to Ibn Umar, a sign that Satan has got hold of her: if anyone were too young or too innocent for Satan to bother with, it would be this girl, and yet here he is. The remark turns a child's song into evidence of the devil's work.

The canonical tradition records the opposite reaction from the Prophet. Two girls were singing the songs of Bu'ath in A'isha's house; Abu Bakr called it 'musical instruments of Satan near the Prophet', and the Prophet said: 'Leave them' (Bukhari 949). Ibn Umar's comment repeats the reaction the Prophet set aside, and it is Ibn Umar's that al-Bayhaqi files in a chapter on singing.

The Muslim response

Muslims who hold that singing is forbidden cite the Companions' condemnations as part of the evidence. IslamQA quotes Ibn Umar, with what it calls a sound chain, explaining 'idle talk' in Q31:6 as singing, and concludes that music and singing are forbidden. The same answer allows women to beat the daff at Eid and weddings as an exception.

Why it fails

An exception for celebrations may answer the general question of music. It does not answer the tone of this remark, which is aimed not at an instrument or a grown singer but at a small girl. The chain is graded good, so this is a fair record of how a leading Companion spoke, and al-Bayhaqi used it to illustrate the law on singers. This entry is Basic: it is one man's remark, but it shows how the condemnation of music reached even a child's song.

Check it yourself