Musnad al-Bazzar

Compiled by al-Bazzar (d. AD 905), printed as al-Bahr al-Zakhkhar. His reports not found in the six books were gathered by al-Haythami in Kashf al-Astar. 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.

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The sun and moon will be 'two bulls' in the Fire Eschatology Hell Science Strange / Obscure Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 8696
"The sun and the moon will be two bulls in the Fire on the Day of Resurrection."

What the hadith says

Abu Salama reported this saying from Abu Hurayra with the famous Successor al-Hasan al-Basri present. Al-Hasan asked, 'And what is their sin?' Abu Salama rebuked him: 'I tell you [a report] from the Messenger of God, and you say, what is their sin?' Al-Bazzar records it in his Musnad (8696) and notes that it is known from Abu Hurayra by this route only. Al-Bukhari has the same chain with only 'the sun and the moon will be rolled up on the Day of Resurrection' (3200). The longer wording is graded sound. Al-Albani says the chain is sound on al-Bukhari's conditions and that the story with al-Hasan is sound (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 124); al-Arna'ut grades al-Tahawi's version sound and al-'Ala'i agrees; Ibn al-Mulaqqin dissents. A version in Musnad Abi Ya'la calling them 'two hamstrung bulls' is very weak.

Why this is a problem

The sun is a star, not an object that can be thrown into a pit, and the moon is a ball of rock. The report treats both as things that will be cast into Hell at the end of time, in the shape of bulls. That is mythic cosmology, and it carries a chain al-Albani judged sound on al-Bukhari's own conditions.

The exchange with al-Hasan makes it worse. One of the most respected early Muslims raised the obvious moral question: Hell is punishment, and the sun and moon have committed no sin. He was not answered; he was silenced with the Prophet's name. The tradition preserves both the objection and the refusal to engage with it, and graded the whole scene sound.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars answer that the sun and moon are not being punished. Al-Khattabi said they are cast in to shame those who worshipped them; Ibn Qutayba, that they return to the fire from which they were made; and al-Isma'ili, that Hell holds other instruments of torment besides its inmates (IslamQA 362279). Ibn Kathir, quoting al-Bazzar's report, defends God's right to do as He wills with His creatures (al-Bidaya 1/38).

Why it fails

These explanations accept that the text means what it says: the sun and moon really end in the Fire. Each then fails on its own terms. Ibn Qutayba's 'return to the fire they came from' assumes both are made of fire; the moon is cold rock that shines only by reflected sunlight. Al-Khattabi's shaming theory uses innocent objects as props in other people's punishment, which is exactly what al-Hasan objected to.

'God does as He wills' is not an answer to al-Hasan but a restatement of Abu Salama's rebuke. The cosmology belongs to the seventh century, and so do the defences.

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Whoever sees Muhammad's private parts will be struck blind Prophetic Character Prophetic Privileges Magic & Occult Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 925
"No one sees my nakedness without his eyes being blotted out."

What the hadith says

Ali reports that the Prophet charged him that no one but Ali should wash his body after death, 'for no one sees my nakedness without his eyes being blotted out'. Ali adds that al-Abbas and Usama handed him the water from behind a curtain. Al-Bazzar records it in his Musnad (925) through Kaysan Abu Umar from Yazid b. Bilal, and says he knows no other route for Yazid's reports from Ali (al-Bazzar's remark). The critics weaken it. Al-Haythami notes that al-Bukhari said of Yazid b. Bilal 'fihi nazar' (he is open to question); al-Dhahabi called the report very munkar, and Ibn Kathir very strange.

Why this is a problem

The report makes the Prophet's body a source of supernatural harm: anyone who sees his nakedness loses his sight. Modesty would explain a curtain; it does not explain blindness. The miracle also protects a privilege. Ali alone may wash the Prophet, and the others must pass the water from behind a screen.

It belongs with other reports about the Prophet's sacred body. A fuller version quoted in al-Salihi's Subul al-Huda has the water-bearers blindfolded, and Ali saying that every limb he took hold of turned as if thirty men were turning it with him. Each retelling adds to the wonder.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars answer that the report is weak, resting on a single route through poorly regarded narrators, and that it conflicts with other reports in which several men took part in washing the body and no one was blinded. A Muslim study of the washing reports concludes that this narration is weak and its blinding clause unsupported (Tohed study).

Why it fails

That is right about the chain, and this entry does not treat the report as authentic. Its interest lies in what the tradition kept. Al-Bazzar recorded it as a report from Ali, al-Haythami collected it in his gathering of the hadiths of al-Bazzar and other collections that are not in the six books (Majma' al-Zawa'id 14267), and al-Salihi's biography of the Prophet repeated it in an expanded form. The idea that the sight of the Prophet's body could blind was not rejected as unthinkable; it was weighed by its narrators and found to have a weak chain.

The alternative is not much firmer than the response suggests: Ibn Majah's report of Ali washing the body (1467) is itself graded weak on sunnah.com.

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'A man in Paradise will reach a hundred virgins in a single day' Paradise Sexual Issues Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 10072
"Yes, by Him in whose hand is my soul, a man will have intercourse with a hundred virgins in a single day."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports that the Prophet was asked, 'Messenger of God, will we have intercourse with our wives in Paradise?' He swore that a man there would have intercourse with a hundred virgins in a single day. The verb (afda ila) is the usual euphemism for consummating intercourse. Al-Bazzar records it in his Musnad (10072) and notes that only Husayn b. Ali narrated it by this route; al-Tabarani has it in al-Mu'jam al-Awsat (718, 'in a single morning') and, in different wording, in al-Mu'jam al-Saghir (795). Al-Albani found the chain sound and knew of no defect in it (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 367), and al-Haythami says its narrators are those of the Sahih except Muhammad b. Thawab, who is trustworthy. Abu Hatim and Abu Zur'a, however, called the Abu Hurayra chain Husayn's mistake: the report really runs through the weak Zayd al-'Ammi to Ibn Abbas, and al-Daraqutni, as quoted, thought the Ibn Abbas form more likely correct.

Why this is a problem

The question was about husbands and wives. The answer is about numbers: a hundred virgins, each day, for a man who will live forever. Paradise is described as a place of sexual consumption on a scale no earthly life could sustain, with virginity as part of the reward. The women appear only as a quantity.

This is not a fringe image raised by polemicists. Al-Albani, the most influential hadith grader of the modern era, examined the chain and wrote that it is sound and that he knew of no defect in it. The early critics who disagreed did not object to the content. They objected to the route, and their alternative still traces the report to Ibn Abbas.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars answer that the report describes the capacity God gives the people of Paradise, not a schedule, and does not oblige anyone to believe that each man receives a hundred new women every day. They add that capacity in Paradise varies with one's deeds, and quote Ibn al-Qayyim that whoever gives up forbidden pleasure for God's sake will receive it in full on the Day of Resurrection (IslamQA 116024). And the chain is disputed: Abu Hatim and Abu Zur'a, two of the great early critics, judged the Abu Hurayra version a mistake.

Why it fails

The 'capacity' reading softens the arithmetic, not the picture. A promise that a man will be able to have intercourse with a hundred virgins in a day is still a promise framed around sexual access to women, given in answer to a question about wives. Calling it the repayment for pleasures given up in this life does not explain why its reward is described in the most worldly terms available.

The chain dispute does not help either. If Abu Hatim and Abu Zur'a are right, the report moves from Abu Hurayra to Ibn Abbas through a weaker narrator, but the content was transmitted all the same, and the leading modern grader accepted the Abu Hurayra route.

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'Most of my community who die, after Allah's decree, die of the evil eye' Science Magic & Occult Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 3052)
"Most of those of my community who die, after Allah's writ, His decree and His destiny, die by the souls [al-Bazzar: meaning by the evil eye]."

What the hadith says

Jabir b. Abdullah reports the Prophet saying that, after Allah's decree, most of his community who die are killed 'by the souls' (bi-l-anfus), which al-Bazzar explains as 'the evil eye'. The report is al-Bazzar's, but no number for it has been found in the printed edition of his Musnad. It is known through al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar (3052), his collection of the hadiths in al-Bazzar's Musnad that are not in the six canonical books, where al-Bazzar adds that he knows it by this chain only. Ibn Abi Asim also records it (al-Sunna 311). It is graded acceptable: Ibn Hajar calls its chain hasan, as does al-Albani, and al-Haythami says its narrators are those of the Sahih except Talib b. Habib, whom he calls trustworthy. The canonical collections have a milder form: 'the evil eye is real' (Muslim 2188).

Why this is a problem

This is an empirical claim, and a large one. It does not merely say the evil eye can kill; it says it kills more of the community than anything else. In the world the hadith was spoken into, people died of infection, childbirth, infancy, famine and war. A prophet with knowledge from God could have named any of these. Instead the leading cause of death among Muslims is given as the envious gaze.

The claim was not quietly forgotten. Ibn Hajar repeated it in his commentary on al-Bukhari and graded it hasan (Fath al-Bari 10/204), al-Albani did the same in the twentieth century, and fatwa services still explain it as describing a real cause of death.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars answer that the evil eye is a real cause of death that acts only by Allah's decree, as the hadith itself says, and that Allah has made several causes of death, the evil eye among them (islamweb fatwa 76856; fatwa 30851). On this view the hadith describes the unseen, not something medicine could measure.

Why it fails

That answer has a hidden cost. If the evil eye works unseen, no one can tell which deaths it caused, no one can know that it causes most of them, and the hadith's claim becomes one that nothing could ever confirm or refute. 'After Allah's decree' does not help either: in Islamic theology every cause of death operates under the decree, yet the hadith still ranks this one above the rest.

A ranking of causes of death is a statement about the visible world. In the visible world the causes of death can be counted, and the evil eye is not among them.

Check it yourself

'Those are the exalted gharaniq': al-Bazzar's connected chain for the Satanic Verses Scripture Integrity Prophetic Character Abrogation Pre-Islamic Borrowings Strong Musnad al-Bazzar 5096
"He recited Surat al-Najm until he reached: 'Have you seen al-Lat and al-'Uzza, and Manat, the third, the other?' And there ran on his tongue: 'Those are the exalted gharaniq; their intercession is hoped for.'"

What the hadith says

Sa'id b. Jubayr reports from Ibn Abbas, with a hedge the chain itself records: 'as far as I reckon; the doubt is in the hadith'. The Prophet, in Mecca, recited Surat al-Najm up to Q53:19-20, and the words about the gharaniq (the exalted goddesses, literally 'cranes') ran on his tongue. The Meccan polytheists heard it and were delighted; it weighed heavily on the Prophet, and God revealed Q22:52: 'We sent no messenger or prophet before you but, when he wished, Satan cast into his wish; then God abrogates what Satan casts.' Al-Bazzar records it in his Musnad (5096; also Kashf al-Astar 2263) and comments that he knows no connected chain to the Prophet 'that it is permissible to mention' except this one; that only Umayya b. Khalid gives it a full chain from Shu'ba; that others narrate it from Sa'id b. Jubayr without Ibn Abbas (mursal); and that the hadith is really known only through al-Kalbi, from Abu Salih, from Ibn Abbas. He calls Umayya 'trustworthy and well known'. Al-Haythami says the narrators of al-Bazzar and al-Tabarani are men of the Sahih (Majma' 11376). Ibn Hajar judges every route except Sa'id b. Jubayr's weak or broken, 'but the many routes show the story has a basis'; al-Albani and al-Shawkani reject it (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The site's Qur'an catalog already discusses the Satanic Verses as told by the biographers and historians. The usual reply is that the story lives only in weak sira and tafsir chains. This version is in a hadith Musnad, through Shu'ba and Sa'id b. Jubayr, with narrators al-Haythami calls men of the Sahih, and its own collector singles it out as the one connected chain worth mentioning. In al-Bazzar's wording Satan is not even the speaker: the praise of the three goddesses simply 'ran on his tongue'. Satan enters only through the verse revealed afterwards, which says that this is what happens to every prophet.

The canonical books preserve the puzzle this story answers. At the end of Surat al-Najm the idolaters prostrated with the Prophet (Tirmidhi 575; 'everyone' prostrated in Bukhari 1070). Several of the versions on the dorar cards end the same way: the idolaters prostrated because, they said, he had spoken well of their gods.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars answer that the story is not established. The connection to Ibn Abbas hangs on one transmitter who admits he is unsure, and al-Bazzar himself says others narrate it as a mursal from Sa'id b. Jubayr. Al-Albani wrote Nasb al-Majaniq li-Nasf Qissat al-Gharaniq against it and says the connected form 'is not sound'; al-Shawkani says the reports are all mursal or broken and prove nothing. Those who grant the story a basis read it, as many versions put it, as Satan casting the words, not the Prophet saying them as revelation, and point to Q22:52's promise that God removes what Satan casts.

Why it fails

The doubt in the chain is real, and this entry does not claim the link to Ibn Abbas is secure. But the same dorar card on which al-Albani rejects the connected form also grades the chain to Sa'id b. Jubayr sahih. On that card the open question is whom Sa'id heard it from; al-Albani still rejects the story, because a report that stops at a Successor (mursal) is weak by hadith standards. Ibn Hajar, the leading commentator on al-Bukhari, concluded that the story has a basis and noted two more mursal routes whose men meet the conditions of the two Sahihs.

The 'Satan said it' reading concedes the event itself: during the Prophet's recitation the idolaters heard praise of their goddesses, and the Prophet was distressed only after they rejoiced. In al-Bazzar's text, the one he thought worth mentioning, the words are on the Prophet's own tongue.

Check it yourself

'Shall I not give up to you the most beautiful of creatures?': Uyayna offers a wife-exchange for A'isha Women Sexual Issues Prophetic Character Pre-Islamic Borrowings Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 8761
"Who is this <em>humayra'</em> beside you? ... Shall I not give up to you [my wife,] the most beautiful of creatures? He said: Uyayna, God has forbidden that."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra explains that 'exchange' (badal) in the Jahiliyya was one man saying to another, 'Exchange your wife with me and I will exchange mine with you': you give up your wife to me and I give up mine to you. God then revealed Q33:52, which tells the Prophet he may not 'exchange them for other wives, even if their beauty pleases you'. Uyayna b. Hisn al-Fazari, a tribal chief, walked in on the Prophet without asking permission while A'isha was with him. Asked why, he said he had never asked permission of any man of Mudar. He then asked who the humayra' ('little fair one') beside him was and, told she was A'isha, Mother of the Believers, made the offer. After he left, the Prophet told A'isha he was 'an obeyed fool', and yet the chief of his people. Al-Bazzar records it (8761, continued on the next page) and says plainly that its narrator Ishaq b. Abd Allah is 'very weak in hadith'; he includes it only because he knows it from the Prophet by no other route, 'so we mentioned it for this reason and explained its defect'. Al-Haythami names him as Ishaq b. Abi Farwa, 'abandoned' (Majma' 11279); al-'Ayni calls the chain very weak and Ibn Hajar notes a supporting report (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The report makes wife-swapping the occasion for a verse addressed to the Prophet himself, and then shows why such a verse might be needed: a chief walks in on the Prophet unannounced, asks who the 'little fair one' beside him is, and offers his own wife in exchange for her, in front of her. The Prophet refuses. But the reason he gives is a ruling, 'God has forbidden that', not that the offer was an insult to A'isha or to the woman being offered.

No one in the story asks the wives. Each woman is something a man can 'give up' to another man. Apart from the Prophet's 'Where is the asking of permission?', the only judgement passed on Uyayna is that he is a fool, and the report adds at once that he leads his people.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is very weak, and that al-Bazzar himself flags its defect, and al-Haythami calls its narrator Ishaq b. Abi Farwa 'abandoned' (matruk). Even as told, the Prophet refuses outright, the verse forbids such exchanges, and Uyayna is called a fool for proposing it. The story records a pagan custom that Islam ended, not one it allowed.

Why it fails

On the chain, the answer is right, and the entry is rated accordingly. Al-Bazzar's own explanation is the interesting part: he preserved a report he knew to be very weak because it was the only route he had for it, and he left it in his Musnad. Al-Haythami repeated it under the commentary on Q33:52, and Ibn Hajar noted a supporting report.

The defence also answers a question the entry does not ask. Nobody claims the Prophet took part. The problem is the picture of marriage the story takes for granted. Wives can be traded between men. The Prophet's answer cites a ban and does not speak of the women. And A'isha's part in the scene is to be looked at, bargained for, and then told the man is a fool.

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The earth on water, the water on a rock, the rock on a fish whose ends meet at the Throne, the fish on an angel Science Strange / Obscure Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 5382
"[The rock is] on the back of a fish whose two ends meet at the Throne. It was said: And the fish, on what is it? He said: On the shoulders of an angel whose feet are in the air."

What the hadith says

Ibn Umar says the Prophet was asked what the earth rests on. He answered step by step: the earth is on water; the water on a green rock; the rock on the back of a fish whose two ends meet at the Throne; and the fish on the shoulders of an angel whose feet are in the air. Al-Bazzar records it in his Musnad (5382). Al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar, his collection of the reports in al-Bazzar's Musnad that are not in the six canonical books, gives a shortened form that goes straight to the fish (2086), with al-Bazzar's note: 'its defect is Sa'id b. Sinan'. Both al-Haythami's books file it under 'the wonders of creation'. In the Majma' he blames al-Bazzar's shaykh Abd Allah b. Ahmad b. Shabib, 'who is weak' (13363). Ibn Adi calls it unpreserved (ghayr mahfuz), and Ibn Hibban calls Sa'id b. Sinan munkar al-hadith (dorar.net cards). The report is weak; al-Albani grades it fabricated (mawdu', al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 294).

Why this is a problem

The site already has Ibn Abbas's report in al-Mustadrak that the earth rests on the Nun, a great fish. The standard reply to that one is that it is not the Prophet speaking: it is a Companion's own words, perhaps borrowed from Jewish lore. This report removes that answer. Here the cosmology is a question put to the Prophet and answered by him, layer by layer, and it goes further than Ibn Abbas: the fish is so vast that its two ends meet at God's Throne, and it is itself carried by an angel standing on nothing.

None of this matches anything real. The earth is not resting on water, a rock or an animal; it orbits the sun with nothing under it. The report is not a metaphor either. It is set out as plain answers to the plain question 'what does the earth rest on?'

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars reject the report. Al-Bazzar himself names its defect, Sa'id b. Sinan; Ibn Hibban says Sa'id narrates objectionable reports, Ibn Adi that the hadith is not preserved, and al-Haythami that al-Bazzar's own shaykh is weak. Pictures of the earth on a fish or a bull are usually traced to Israelite lore (Isra'iliyyat), not to the Prophet, and no Muslim is bound by a report graded like this.

Why it fails

That is correct on the chain, and the entry is not rated higher for that reason. But the two answers cannot both be used at once. The sound Nun report is excused because it is not the Prophet's; this one is the Prophet's in form, and is excused because it is weak. Together they show the fish cosmology circulating both as Companion commentary and as a saying of the Prophet.

It was also recorded without embarrassment. Al-Bazzar placed it in his Musnad, and al-Haythami put it under 'the wonders of creation' in two separate books. The verdicts on the dorar cards name narrators or call the report unpreserved or fabricated; none of them gives the fish whose ends meet at the Throne as the reason.

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'Whoever would like to see a man who has reached the Barrier, let him look at this man' Eschatology Science Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 3668
"Whoever would be pleased to look at a man who has come to the Barrier, let him look at this man."

What the hadith says

Yusuf b. Abi Maryam was sitting with the Companion Abu Bakra when a man came up and asked to be recognised: he was the one who had told the Prophet he had seen the radm, the barrier that holds back Gog and Magog. He had travelled to a land whose people did nothing but work iron. At sunset he heard a sound he had never heard before and was frightened; his host told him not to be afraid, it was 'the sound of people leaving this barrier at this hour'. Next morning he went to it: bricks of iron, each like a rock, the whole looking like a striped cloak, with nails like tree trunks. He described it to the Prophet, who said the words above; Abu Bakra confirmed: 'He spoke the truth.' Al-Bazzar records it (3668) and says he knows no one but Abu Bakra who narrates it, and no route to him but this. Al-Haythami says al-Bazzar's shaykh Amr b. Malik was abandoned by Abu Zur'a and Abu Hatim, though Ibn Hibban trusted him while saying he errs, and that the chain contains someone he does not know (Majma' 13375). Al-Albani grades it very weak (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an's barrier of Gog and Magog (Q18:94-97) is here a real iron wall that a traveller could reach and inspect, in a country of ironworkers, with nails like tree trunks. The Prophet does not describe it himself, but he publicly endorses the man's account: anyone who wants to see a man who has reached the barrier should look at him. No such wall has ever been found.

In the canonical collections the barrier is also physical: a hole 'like this', the size of a thumb-and-finger ring, has opened in it (Bukhari 3346). This report gives the same object a location and an eyewitness.

The Muslim response

The report is graded very weak by al-Albani, and al-Haythami points to an abandoned narrator and an unknown one in its chain. It is not used as evidence for anything. The traveller is unnamed, the sounds are his host's explanation, and nothing in the text obliges a Muslim to think that any particular wall is the Qur'an's barrier.

Why it fails

That is right, and the entry is rated Basic. What survives is a piece of evidence about how early Muslims understood the barrier. It was a physical structure out there somewhere, and a traveller could gain standing by claiming to have seen it, with the Prophet's endorsement and a Companion's 'he spoke the truth'. Al-Haythami filed the story among the 'wonders of creation'. The Qur'anic wall was taken literally, and this report shows that literal reading being put under the Prophet's name.

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Skulls set up in the fields 'because of the evil eye' Magic & Occult Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 667
"He ordered skulls to be set up in the crops. I said: For what reason? He said: Because of the evil eye."

What the hadith says

Ali b. Abi Talib, in a report passed on by his son Umar, says the Prophet ordered skulls to be set up in the crops, and when asked why, said: 'Because of the evil eye.' The text does not say whose skulls. Al-Bazzar records it (667) and says he does not preserve it from the Prophet by any connected route except this one. Al-Haythami gives it a chapter of its own, 'Setting up skulls in crops because of the evil eye', and says two of its narrators, al-Haytham b. Muhammad b. Hafs and Ya'qub b. Muhammad al-Zuhri, are weak (Majma' 8433). Ibn al-Qattan says it is not sound (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

This is a charm. Skulls set up in a field do nothing for the crop; they are meant to catch or turn the envious glance before it can harm the harvest. The report puts that practice in the Prophet's mouth as a command, with the evil eye as its stated reason.

It sits awkwardly next to the canonical condemnation of charms: 'spells, amulets and love-charms are shirk' (Abu Dawud 3883). The tradition preserved both a ban on protective charms and a prophetic order to plant skulls against the eye.

The Muslim response

The report is weak and no one acts on it. Al-Haythami names two weak narrators and Ibn al-Qattan says it is not sound. The sound teaching on the evil eye is to seek God's protection and use the prescribed prayers, not to set up objects in fields.

Why it fails

That answer is correct about the chain, which is why the entry is Basic. The interest is in what the tradition kept. Al-Bazzar recorded it as the one connected route he knew. Al-Haythami, five centuries later, did not just mention it in passing: he gave it its own chapter heading, between the chapter on what to say when you admire something and the chapter on spells against the eye. The report shows how easily folk protection against the eye could be credited to the Prophet.

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Umar: 'I would have left no Bedouin but I killed him, unless he became Muslim' Warfare & Jihad Apostasy & Blasphemy Disbelievers Governance Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 313
"Were it not that I heard the Messenger of God say, 'God will protect this religion by Christians of Rabi'a on the bank of the Euphrates,' I would have left no Bedouin but I killed him, or he became Muslim."

What the hadith says

The words are Umar b. al-Khattab's own. Sa'id b. al-'As, speaking on the day of al-Marj, claimed to have heard Umar say that only one thing held him back from killing every Bedouin (a'rabi, a desert Arab) who did not accept Islam: a saying of the Prophet that God would protect the religion through Christians of the tribe of Rabi'a on the Euphrates. The prophetic part is only that prediction; the threat is Umar's. Al-Bazzar records it (313) and says the saying is narrated from the Prophet only through Umar, by this chain. Al-Haythami says its narrators are men of the Sahih apart from Abd Allah b. Umar al-Qurashi, who is trustworthy (Majma' 9565), in a chapter on 'those of the wicked by whom Islam is supported'. No modern grading was found. On the dorar search al-Dhahabi calls it munkar (Mizan al-I'tidal 2/465) and says its Abd Allah is unknown (majhul, al-Muhadhdhab 7/3748).

Why this is a problem

The second caliph says he would have carried out the mass killing of desert Arabs who would not convert. The alternative he names is not tribute or treaty but conversion: 'I killed him, or he became Muslim.' The narrators, by al-Haythami's check, are men of the Sahih.

What stopped him was not mercy or a principle against forced conversion. It was a prophecy that some Christian Bedouin of Rabi'a would be useful to the religion, and al-Haythami files the report among people 'of the wicked' by whom Islam is supported. Read that way, the Christians are spared because they are useful, while the threat stands against everyone else.

The Muslim response

The specific answer is to the chain: al-Dhahabi calls the report munkar and its Abd Allah unknown. A common answer to reports of this kind is that many classical jurists held Arab idolaters could be offered only Islam or fighting, so Umar is stating a known legal position, not a new cruelty. In any case he did not act on it, and the restraint he describes came from the Prophet's own words.

Why it fails

Al-Dhahabi's verdict weighs against al-Haythami's, and this entry does not claim the chain is secure. The legal answer, though, accepts the core of the problem. If Umar's words reflect a legal position, then the position is that the Arabs of the desert could be given the choice of conversion or death. The answer moves the threat from Umar to the law, but the threat is still there.

The claim that he did not act on it is true only because of the prophecy. By his own account, nothing else held him back. The religion's protection is promised through Christians; the Bedouin who are not needed are the ones he would have killed.

Check it yourself

'Fatima guarded her chastity, so God has barred her offspring from the Fire' Prophetic Privileges Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 1829
"Fatima guarded her chastity, so God has forbidden her offspring to the Fire."

What the hadith says

Abd Allah b. Mas'ud reports the Prophet saying that because his daughter Fatima guarded her chastity (the Qur'an's phrase for Mary, Q66:12), God has made her descendants forbidden to the Fire. Al-Bazzar records it (1829) and notes that only Amr b. Ghiyath narrates it this way, that he was not corroborated, and that others narrate it from Amr without the Companion (mursal). Al-Haythami quotes al-Tabarani's wording, 'God admitted her and her offspring into Paradise for guarding her chastity', says al-Bazzar has it 'similarly', and calls Amr b. Attab (or Ibn Ghiyath) weak (Majma' 15199). Al-Albani grades it weak, and very weak in al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 456; Ibn Taymiyya calls it a lie (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The report turns one woman's virtue into a guarantee for a whole bloodline. Her descendants, counted today in the millions, are kept from Hell because of who their ancestor was, not because of anything they believe or do. That cuts against the Qur'an's rule that 'no bearer of burdens bears another's burden, and man has only what he strives for' (Q53:38-39). It also cuts against the Prophet's warning in Bukhari, given to Fatima by name: 'I cannot save you from God's punishment' (Bukhari 2753).

The idea is not confined to this one weak chain. On the same page of the Majma', just before it, al-Haythami lists al-Tabarani's report from Ibn Abbas that the Prophet told Fatima, 'God will not punish you or your child' (waladik), and says its narrators are trustworthy.

The Muslim response

Most Sunni critics reject the report, although al-Hakim called its chain sound and al-Suyuti marked it sahih. Al-Albani calls it weak, Ibn Taymiyya calls it a lie, and al-Bazzar himself points out that its narrator stands alone and that others give it without the Companion. Salvation by lineage contradicts the Qur'an and Bukhari 2753, and Sunni Islam does not teach it.

Why it fails

On this chain the answer is right, which is why the entry is not rated higher. But the answer relies on Bukhari 2753 and the Qur'an against the report, and that only shows that the tradition carried both views. The privileged-lineage version was recorded by al-Bazzar and al-Tabarani, and in a neighbouring report al-Haythami found nothing wrong with the narrators. Ibn Taymiyya's strong word 'lie' shows the report was in circulation and needed refuting. Claims of special salvation for the Prophet's family were being put in the Prophet's mouth, and the collections kept them.

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A naked woman walks in; 'God has decreed jealousy for women and jihad for men' Women Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 1490
"I think she is jealous. God has decreed jealousy for women and jihad for men; whoever of them bears it patiently has the reward of a martyr."

What the hadith says

Ibn Mas'ud was sitting with the Prophet and his Companions when a woman came towards them naked. One of the men got up, threw a garment over her and drew her to himself. The Prophet's face changed. One of the Companions said, 'I think she is his wife,' and the Prophet said the words above. The text does not say what she was jealous of; the usual reading is a co-wife. Al-Bazzar records it (1490) and says he knows it from the Prophet by this chain only. He calls Ubayd b. al-Sabbah 'acceptable', and says Kamil b. al-'Ala' is well known among the Kufans though no one else shares this hadith with him. Al-Haythami notes that Abu Hatim declared Ubayd weak and that the rest of the narrators are trustworthy (Majma' 7690, chapter 'the jealousy of women'). Abu Hatim called the hadith munkar and once 'fabricated with this chain'; al-Albani grades it munkar (objectionable) (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The report pairs a woman's jealousy with a man's jihad as the burden God has 'decreed' for each sex. The man's burden is fighting; the woman's is putting up with what makes her jealous, which in a household of several wives is her husband's other wives. The reward for her patience is a martyr's.

The scene makes the point sharper. A woman is so overcome that she walks naked into a public gathering, and the response is not to ask what was done to her. It is to tell women in general that their jealousy is assigned by God and that the virtue is to endure it. The arrangement that causes the jealousy is never questioned.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that al-Albani grades the report munkar and that one of its narrators was declared weak by Abu Hatim, so it carries no authority. Those who do quote it read it as consolation: a woman who bears a hard situation with patience is rewarded generously, and the comparison with jihad honours her endurance rather than belittling her.

Why it fails

The grading is real, and the entry is not rated higher. But the report was not an obscure fringe text. Al-Bazzar vouched for his narrators by name, al-Haythami found only one disputed man in the chain (Ibn Hibban, on the dorar cards, also rejects Kamil b. al-'Ala'), and the dorar cards show at least one later scholar, al-Ghazzi, calling its chain good (jayyid). It was preserved and quoted as consolation for exactly the situation it describes.

And the 'consolation' reading is the problem. Comforting a woman with a martyr's reward for enduring her husband's other wives takes the arrangement as fixed and makes her patience the only thing that can change.

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Intercourse uncovered: the angels leave, Satan stays, and 'Satan has a share' in the child Sexual Issues Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 8628
"When one of you comes to his wife, let him cover himself, for if he does not cover himself the angels feel shy and leave, and Satan remains; and if a child comes between them, Satan has a share in him."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports the Prophet telling a man to cover himself (yastatir, with a sheet or garment) when he has intercourse with his wife. If he does not, the angels present feel shy and leave, Satan stays, and any child conceived has a share of Satan in him. Al-Bazzar records it (8628) and says it is narrated with this wording only by this chain and that 'its chain is not strong'. Al-Haythami repeats that al-Bazzar weakened his own chain and notes that al-Tabarani's chain contains a narrator he could not identify (Majma' 7557). Ibn Hajar says there is weakness in its chain (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The report makes a child's spiritual condition depend on whether his parents were under a sheet when he was conceived. Angels attend the couple and leave out of embarrassment; Satan is not embarrassed and stays, and takes a share in the child. A child's share of Satan is settled before birth by a detail of bedroom practice he had no part in.

The canonical tradition has a milder form of the same worry. In Bukhari 141 a man says a prayer before intercourse so that Satan will not harm any child they conceive. This report adds the departing angels, the remaining Satan, and Satan's 'share'.

The Muslim response

The report is weak, and al-Bazzar, its own collector, says so. Al-Haythami and Ibn Hajar agree. What Muslims take from the sound reports is the prayer in Bukhari 141 and a recommendation of modesty, not the idea that uncovered intercourse hands a child to Satan.

Why it fails

That is a fair answer, and the entry is Basic. It is worth noting only that the idea did not stand alone: al-Haythami's chapter on intercourse and covering lists it next to other reports telling couples not to strip 'like two wild asses', and al-Tabarani also has it. The fear that Satan can enter a child at conception runs through the tradition, canonical and not. This report is simply its most vivid form.

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When Mariya bore Ibrahim, 'something about him fell into the Prophet's mind' until Gabriel hailed him 'father of Ibrahim' Prophetic Character Women Slavery & Captives Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 6331
"When Ibrahim, the son of the Messenger of God by Mariya his slave-girl, was born, something about him fell into the Prophet's mind, until Gabriel came to him and said: Peace be upon you, father of Ibrahim."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik reports that when Mariya, the Prophet's slave-girl, gave birth to his son Ibrahim, 'something about him' troubled the Prophet, until Gabriel came and greeted him as 'father of Ibrahim'. The text does not say what the 'something' was; the greeting is what ended it. Al-Bazzar records it (6331) through Ibn Lahi'a, from Uqayl and Yazid b. Abi Habib, from al-Zuhri. Al-Haythami says Ibn Lahi'a's hadith is hasan and the rest of the narrators are men of the Sahih (Majma' 7733); al-Salihi calls its chain good (jayyid) (dorar.net card). Ibn Lahi'a is a disputed narrator.

Why this is a problem

Gabriel's greeting answers one question: whose son is Ibrahim? Its point is to call the Prophet the boy's father. So the 'something' that troubled him was settled by being told he was the father. The al-Mustadrak page already has A'isha's version of the gossip that he had 'claimed another man's child'. This report puts the unease in the Prophet's own mind, and has it resolved not by trust in Mariya or by any inquiry, but by an angel.

The surrounding reports show what the talk was. On the same page of the Majma', just before this one, Ali says much was said against Mariya over a Coptic cousin who visited her, and that the Prophet gave him a sword to kill the man if he found him with her; al-Haythami calls its narrators trustworthy, while noting that Ibn Ishaq is a mudallis. In the canonical Muslim 2771 Ali is sent to strike the neck of a man suspected with the Prophet's slave-mother, and spares him only on finding he has no sexual organ.

The Muslim response

Defenders read the 'something' as distress caused by slanderers' gossip, not as the Prophet's own doubt, and Gabriel's greeting as God's public clearing of Mariya. The text does not name doubt about paternity, and Ibn Lahi'a is a disputed narrator, so the wording cannot bear much weight.

Why it fails

The text says the 'something' fell into the Prophet's own mind (fi nafs al-nabi), not into other people's mouths. If it was only gossip, it was gossip that reached him and stayed with him until an angel spoke. And the 'disputed narrator' answer meets a chain in which al-Haythami calls Ibn Lahi'a's hadith hasan and the other narrators men of the Sahih, and that al-Salihi calls good.

The report does not say the Prophet believed the rumour, and this entry does not claim it. What it shows is a prophet who receives revelation needing a special greeting from Gabriel to be at ease about his own son, in a story whose other versions include a death sentence for the suspected man.

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'All flies are in the Fire except the bee' Animals Hell Strange / Obscure Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 3498)
"All flies are in the Fire except the bee."

What the hadith says

Ibn Umar reports the Prophet saying that every kind of fly is in the Fire except the bee (literally 'the fly of the bees'). The report is known as al-Bazzar's through al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar, his collection of the reports in al-Bazzar's Musnad that are not in the six canonical books (3498), under the heading 'all flies are in the Fire'; no copy was found in the printed text of al-Bazzar's Musnad. Al-Bazzar's comment there: 'Only Isma'il [b. Muslim] connected it, and he was not a hafiz; the reliable narrators report it from Mujahid from Ubayd b. Umayr', that is, without the Prophet's Companion (mursal). Al-Haythami confirms that al-Bazzar has it 'in brief'. He says al-Tabarani has it with several chains, 'some of them with narrators all trustworthy', and lists versions from Anas (Abu Ya'la) and Ibn Abbas (al-Tabarani) with trustworthy narrators (Majma' 6088-6090). Ibn Hajar grades it weak, but al-Albani grades it sound (sahih, Sahih al-Jami' 3442) from Ibn Umar, Ibn Abbas and Ibn Mas'ud, and al-Suyuti calls the Anas version's chain good (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The report sorts insects for the afterlife. Flies, which cannot sin, are in Hell; bees, which make honey, are spared. Nothing in the saying gives a reason. The likely logic is usefulness to humans: the honey-maker is exempted and the pests go to the Fire.

It was not a one-off. Al-Haythami found it from three Companions, Ibn Umar, Anas and Ibn Abbas, and in each case judged the narrators of at least one chain trustworthy.

The Muslim response

Al-Bazzar himself says the connected form rests on a narrator who was not a careful memoriser, and that reliable narrators give it as mursal; Ibn Hajar grades it weak, though al-Albani grades it sound. Those who accept it usually explain that the flies are in Hell not as punishment, since animals are not held accountable, but as one more torment for its human inmates.

Why it fails

The weakness of al-Bazzar's own chain is not in dispute. But the answer does not touch the other chains al-Haythami found sound in their narrators, and on them al-Albani grades the saying sahih. And the 'instruments of torment' reading has its own cost: it fills Hell with swarms of creatures made to plague the damned. The bee's exemption is then a reward for being useful to people in this world.

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Burayda: heavens, earths and mountains curse the old adulterer, and fornicators' private parts stink out the people of Hell Hell Hudud Gross / Vile Sexual Issues Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 4431
"The seven heavens, the seven earths and the mountains curse the old adulterer, and the private parts of the fornicators hurt the people of the Fire with the stench of their smell."

What the hadith says

The full text in al-Bazzar is the Companion Burayda b. al-Husayb's own statement, passed on by his son Abd Allah: the seven heavens, the seven earths and the mountains curse the old man who commits adultery, and the private parts of fornicators torment the people of Hell with their stench (Musnad al-Bazzar 4431). Al-Bazzar then gives a second chain (4432), through Abu Mu'awiya, from Burayda 'from the Prophet', saying only that it is 'similar' (bi-nahwihi) without repeating the words, and comments that no one but Abu Mu'awiya raised it to the Prophet. Al-Haythami says both chains contain Salih b. Hayyan, who is weak (Majma' 10541-10542). Al-Mundhiri says it cannot even be considered hasan (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

The picture is of punishment as revulsion. Hell is already fire; this adds that one group of sinners is marked out by the smell of their genitals, which is so foul that the other damned suffer from it. The whole cosmos, seven heavens, seven earths and the mountains, is enlisted to curse an old man for adultery.

One narrator, Abu Mu'awiya, attached the saying to the Prophet. Al-Haythami preserved both forms, the Companion's and the one raised to the Prophet, under the chapter condemning fornication.

The Muslim response

This is primarily a Companion's own statement, not a saying of the Prophet: only one narrator raised it to him, and both chains contain a weak narrator, Salih b. Hayyan. Al-Mundhiri rejects it outright. Nothing in Islamic belief depends on it.

Why it fails

That is right, and this entry treats it as Burayda's words, rated Basic. What it shows is how a Companion talked about sexual sin. Burayda described the punishment of the fornicator in terms of stench and cosmic cursing, and a later transmitter could put the same words in the Prophet's mouth. Al-Bazzar recorded the raised form even while noting it was a one-man attribution.

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'Every prophet lived half as long as the prophet before him' Contradictions Logical Inconsistency Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 4345
"God never sent a prophet but he lived half of what the prophet before him lived."

What the hadith says

Zayd b. Arqam reports the Prophet stating a rule for the lives of prophets: each one lived half as long as the one before him. Al-Bazzar records it (4345; also Kashf al-Astar 2341) and says he knows it from Zayd only by this chain. Ibn Kathir says it is 'not sound in its text nor in its chain', and al-Albani grades it weak; but Ibn Hajar and al-Sakhawi grade it hasan through its supporting routes (dorar.net cards). A separate, longer version in al-Tabarani, from A'isha telling what Fatima heard at the Prophet's deathbed, adds that Jesus lived 120 years and that the Prophet expected to die 'at the head of sixty'. Al-Haythami calls its chain weak and says al-Bazzar has part of it, with weakness (Majma' 14245). The Jesus detail is not in al-Bazzar's text. The canonical account of that deathbed secret (Bukhari 6285) has no lifespan rule.

Why this is a problem

The rule can be checked, and it fails at once. The Qur'an says Noah stayed among his people 950 years (Q29:14). By our arithmetic, halve 950 just ten times and less than a year is left (950 ÷ 1,024), yet the Qur'an names more than ten prophets after Noah, from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph to Moses, David, Solomon, John and Jesus. Run it forward from the other end and it fails too: Muhammad died at 63 (Bukhari 4466), so the prophet before him would need 126 years, the one before that 252, and so on. No list of prophets can fit.

This is not a matter of reading something mystical into the text. It is a plain claim about how long people lived, put in the Prophet's mouth as something God arranged.

The Muslim response

Most Muslim critics do not accept it, though Ibn Hajar and al-Sakhawi graded it hasan. Ibn Kathir rejects it in both text and chain, which means he judged the content itself unsound, and the longer Tabarani version is weak by al-Haythami's verdict. No Muslim doctrine depends on it.

Why it fails

That is the honest position, and it is why the entry is Moderate, not Strong. But Ibn Kathir's verdict on the text concedes the point of this entry: the content is false. The interest is that a saying which fails simple arithmetic circulated under the Prophet's name in more than one form. It came from Zayd b. Arqam through al-Bazzar, and from A'isha and Fatima through al-Tabarani, with Jesus' 120 years attached to it. It was recorded in the hadith collections, and while Ibn Kathir rejected what any reader could test, Ibn Hajar and al-Sakhawi graded it hasan.

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'The one to be sacrificed was Isaac' (al-Abbas, from the Prophet) Contradictions Scripture Integrity Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 1308
"The one to be sacrificed is Isaac."

What the hadith says

Al-Bazzar records, from al-Hasan, from al-Ahnaf b. Qays, from the Prophet's uncle al-Abbas, that the Prophet said: 'The one to be sacrificed (al-dhabih) is Isaac' (1308). His shaykh produced it 'from the original of his book'. Al-Bazzar adds that a group of narrators give it from al-Mubarak b. Fadala by the same chain as al-Abbas's own words (mawquf), not the Prophet's. Al-Albani grades the prophetic saying weak in one book and fabricated in another (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an tells the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son without naming the son (Q37:101-107). Today the standard Muslim answer is that it was Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs. This report has the Prophet say the opposite, agreeing with the Bible that it was Isaac.

Even on al-Bazzar's own account, the uncle of the Prophet held this view: a group of narrators give it as al-Abbas's own words. Either the Prophet said Isaac and the later consensus is wrong, or one of the Prophet's closest relatives taught something about the Qur'an's most famous sacrifice that the later tradition rejects.

The Muslim response

The prophetic form is weak, and al-Albani calls it fabricated; al-Bazzar himself points out that a group of narrators give it as al-Abbas's own words, not the Prophet's words. The majority of scholars hold that the son was Ishmael, and many argue from the Qur'an itself, which announces Isaac's birth only after the sacrifice story ends (Q37:112).

Why it fails

The response is largely right about the chain, and the entry is Moderate. But the fallback, that it was al-Abbas's own view, does not help. It confirms that the identity of the son was disputed among the very first generation, and that a senior member of the Prophet's family named Isaac. A question the Qur'an could have settled with one word was left open, and the tradition's own reports do not close it: the saying that names Isaac is rejected, and the Companion who held that view was the Prophet's own uncle.

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'I do not know whether the hadd punishments are expiations or not' Hudud Contradictions Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 8519
"I do not know whether the hadd punishments are expiations or not; I do not know whether Tubba' was accursed or not; and I do not know whether 'Uzayr was a prophet or not."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports the Prophet admitting three things he did not know, the first being whether the fixed punishments of Islamic law (hudud), such as flogging, amputation and stoning, wipe out the sin of the person punished. Al-Bazzar records it through Abd al-Razzaq, Ma'mar, Ibn Abi Dhi'b and al-Maqburi (8519), and again by another chain (8541). Al-Haythami, in a chapter titled 'Do the hudud expiate sins or not?', says al-Bazzar has it with two chains, the narrators of one of which are men of the Sahih apart from Ahmad b. Mansur al-Ramadi, who is trustworthy (Majma' 10594). Al-Albani grades this three-part form, with 'Uzayr, weak (Da'if al-Jami' 4991), but grades sound, on the conditions of al-Bukhari and Muslim, the form that names Dhu al-Qarnayn instead of 'Uzayr and keeps the hudud clause (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 2217; al-Hakim and Ibn Hazm also call it sound); and al-Bukhari said it is not established, the mursal of al-Zuhri being more correct (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

Abu Dawud has the same saying through the same chain, Abd al-Razzaq from Ma'mar from Ibn Abi Dhi'b, but with only Tubba' and 'Uzayr (Abu Dawud 4674). The clause about the hudud is missing. Al-Bazzar's version shows the Prophet unsure whether the punishments he imposed did anything for the soul of the person flogged, cut or stoned.

Bukhari says the opposite. In the pledge reported by Ubada b. al-Samit, whoever commits one of these sins 'and is punished for it in this world, that is an expiation for him' (Bukhari 18). Both cannot be the Prophet's settled knowledge. And the canonical version that leaves the clause out uses the same chain that, in al-Bazzar, contains it.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer in two ways. The form with 'Uzayr is weak: al-Albani grades it so, and al-Bukhari himself judged that it is not established and that the version without the Companion is more correct. And even if it is accepted, it was said before revelation settled the matter, after which the Prophet taught that the punishment is an expiation, as in Bukhari 18.

Why it fails

The first answer runs against al-Haythami's narrator check, which found one of al-Bazzar's chains to be men of the Sahih plus one trustworthy man, and against al-Albani himself, who grades the hudud clause sound in the form that names Dhu al-Qarnayn (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 2217). And the clause is exactly what Abu Dawud's matching chain lacks: one transmission kept a clause the other did not, and the two give different pictures of what the Prophet knew.

The second answer needs a timeline that the reports do not give. It also concedes that at some point the Prophet was imposing punishments without knowing whether they purged the sin. Al-Haythami thought the question serious enough to head a chapter with it.

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One breath from a man of Hell would burn a hundred thousand people in a mosque Hell Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 9623
"If there were a hundred thousand or more in the mosque, and then a man of the people of the Fire breathed, he would burn them."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports the Prophet saying that a single breath from one of the people of Hell would burn a hundred thousand people gathered in a mosque. Al-Bazzar records it (9623) and says only Abu Hurayra narrates it from the Prophet, by this route only, and that it is really known through Abu Ubayda al-Haddad. Al-Haythami says its narrator Abd al-Rahim b. Harun is weak, though Ibn Hibban counted him trustworthy when he narrated from his book. He also lists a version in Abu Ya'la, 'the mosque and those in it would burn', whose narrators are men of the Sahih if the unnamed shaykh is Ibn Rahawayh (Majma' 18602-18603). Al-Albani grades it sound through its supporting routes (sahih li-ghayrihi) (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The report measures Hell's heat by its effect on bodies: the damned are so saturated with fire that their exhalation alone would incinerate a crowd. It is meant to frighten, and it does it by describing the condition of people who will, on the standard view, remain in that state for ever.

Al-Albani grades it sound through its supporting routes, and al-Haythami found a second version whose narrators may all be men of the Sahih. It belongs to the mainstream picture of Hell, not to its fringes.

The Muslim response

Muslims accept it as a description of the unseen: Hell's heat is beyond anything in this world, and the Prophet described it in terms his hearers could grasp, to warn them away from it. No special defence is offered; the report is meant to frighten, and that is its purpose.

Why it fails

There is little to rebut on the chain, and the entry is Basic: the report is graphic but does not add much to what the Qur'an already says about Hell. Its significance is cumulative. Hell in the hadith is described physically and in detail. This report adds that its inmates become so full of fire that a single breath would destroy a crowd, and an accepted grading puts that detail into the standard Muslim picture of the afterlife.

Check it yourself

God locked a wind in a house; the south wind is what leaks through a gap in its door Science Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 4063
"God created a wind, lodged it in a house and locked a door on it. If that door were opened it would scatter everything between heaven and earth. What comes to you comes only through a gap in that door; you call it the south wind, and with God it is <em>al-azyab</em>."

What the hadith says

Abu Dharr reports the Prophet explaining where the south wind comes from: God shut a wind inside a house, and the wind people feel is only what escapes through a gap in its door. If the door opened, the wind would scatter everything between heaven and earth. Al-Bazzar records it (4063) and says it is narrated only from Abu Dharr, by this route only; al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar, his collection of the reports in al-Bazzar's Musnad that are not in the six canonical books repeats it (2088). The chain runs from Sufyan b. Uyayna and Amr b. Dinar through Yazid b. Ju'duba. Al-Haythami identifies him as Yazid b. Iyad (printed 'b. Ja'da', that is, Ibn Ju'duba) and calls him 'a liar' (kadhdhab) (Majma' 13380). The report is close to fabricated.

Why this is a problem

Wind is moving air, driven by differences in heat and pressure. The south wind of Arabia is a seasonal pattern, not a leak from a sealed room. The report replaces that with a building and a door, and puts the explanation in the Prophet's mouth as hidden knowledge: 'you call it the south wind, and with God it is al-azyab'.

The Muslim response

The report contains a narrator al-Haythami calls a liar, and Muslims do not attribute it to the Prophet. A report with a liar in its chain is not evidence of anything.

Why it fails

That is the right verdict on the chain, and the entry is Basic. What the report shows is how material from a man later called a liar travelled. It passed through two highly respected transmitters: Amr b. Dinar transmitted it from him, and Sufyan b. Uyayna from Amr. Al-Bazzar recorded it, and al-Haythami filed it twice, in Kashf al-Astar and among 'the wonders of creation' in the Majma'. Folk weather lore reached the collections with a prophetic label and some of the best names in the chain.

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'The children of the polytheists are the servants of the people of Paradise' Paradise Disbelievers Slavery & Captives Moral Problems Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 7466
"The children of the polytheists are the servants of the people of Paradise."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik reports the Prophet saying that the children of polytheists, those who die young, will be the servants of the people of Paradise. Al-Bazzar records it (7466), and on the same page through a second route as Anas's own words, not raised to the Prophet (7467). He also has it from Samura b. Jundub: the Prophet was asked about the children of the polytheists and said, 'They are the servants of the people of Paradise' (4516). Al-Haythami says the narrators of al-Bazzar's and al-Tabarani's Anas versions, apart from a weak man in Abu Ya'la's chain, are men of the Sahih, and that the Samura version has Abbad b. Mansur, trusted by Yahya al-Qattan but with some weakness (Majma' 11955-11956). Al-Albani grades it sound (sahih); Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades it weak (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

Children who died before they could sin are given a rank in eternity according to their parents' religion. The children of Muslims, in a report in the neighbouring chapter of the Majma', are in Paradise 'cared for by Abraham'. The children of polytheists are there to serve. Even where this report spares them Hell, it does not make them equals; the parents' unbelief becomes the child's permanent status.

Al-Bazzar's comment on the Samura version shows where the wording came from. It is the long dream hadith narrated by Awf from Abu Raja' from Samura, and Abbad b. Mansur 'added' the servants line. Bukhari has that hadith by the same route, and there the children of the polytheists are simply among the children around Abraham, with no mention of serving (Bukhari 7047).

The Muslim response

Muslims hold several views on these children, and many scholars place them in Paradise, which is merciful compared with the alternatives. Serving the people of Paradise is presented as an honour and a joy, not a punishment, since there is no hardship there. Elsewhere the Prophet simply said, 'God knows best what they would have done' (Bukhari 1383).

Why it fails

Calling service an honour does not change who serves whom. The report does not make all children servants. It singles out the children of polytheists, and only the believers are served. The difference between them is nothing the children did.

The grading does not make the problem go away either. Al-Albani calls it sound. The Bukhari version by the same Companion and route has these children with Abraham. So on Samura's route the 'servants' wording is an addition, yet a leading modern critic accepts that wording through Anas and Salman, and it ranks the dead children of non-Muslims below the believers in Paradise.

Check it yourself

'And you, Umar?' 'By God, I would kill him': the Prophet asks what they would do to a man found with Abu Bakr's wife Women Hudud Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 2940
"'If you saw a man with Umm Ruman, what would you do to him?' He said: 'By God, I would do him harm.' He said: 'And you, Umar?' He said: 'By God, I would kill him.' ... Then there was revealed: 'Those who accuse their wives and have no witnesses except themselves...'"

What the hadith says

Hudhayfa b. al-Yaman reports that the Prophet put a question to Abu Bakr: what would he do if he saw a man with Umm Ruman, Abu Bakr's wife and the mother of A'isha? Abu Bakr answered that he would do the man harm. The Prophet then asked Umar, who said he would kill him, adding an obscure curse ('God curse the weaker one, for he is vile'). Then Q24:6 was revealed, the verse that sets out the oath procedure (li'an) for a husband who accuses his wife without witnesses. Al-Bazzar records it in his Musnad (2940; also Kashf al-Astar 2237). He says that no one gave it a full chain except al-Nadr b. Shumayl from Yunus, and his very next report (2941) gives it from Zayd b. Yuthay' without Hudhayfa, that is, without the Companion. Al-Haythami says its narrators are trustworthy (Majma' 11195). On the dorar.net cards, al-Wadi'i says the version without the Companion is 'more precise and stronger', and al-Suyuti says the narrators are trustworthy 'except that al-Bazzar used to narrate from memory and err'.

Why this is a problem

The Prophet himself chooses the scenario, and he sets it in the household of his closest Companion: a man found with Abu Bakr's wife, the mother of his own wife A'isha. One Companion answers that he would do the man harm, and the other that he would kill him. In this text the Prophet does not rebuke either answer. What follows is a verse of the Qur'an.

The canonical collections keep the same instinct and the same approval of it. When Sa'd b. 'Ubada said he would strike such a man with the edge of his sword, the Prophet's reply was: 'Do you wonder at Sa'd's jealousy? I am more jealous than he, and God is more jealous than I' (Bukhari 6846; Muslim 1499a). Al-Bazzar's report adds a case the canonical books do not contain. In it, the Prophet asks his two future successors what they would do to a man found with Abu Bakr's wife, and Umar answers with killing.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Umar's words are Umar's own, not a ruling of the Prophet. The response that matters is the revelation, and the li'an verse took such cases away from private vengeance and gave them to an oath before the community. Muslim's Sahih records the rule plainly. When Sa'd asked whether a man who finds another with his wife should kill him, the Prophet said 'No' (Muslim 1498a), and he told Sa'd to wait until he could bring four witnesses (Muslim 1498b). The chain is also disputed: al-Wadi'i prefers the form that does not reach a Companion.

Why it fails

The legal point is fair. The canonical rule forbids a husband to take the law into his own hands. But the rule and the sentiment sit side by side in the same collections. The Prophet who said 'No' to Sa'd also praised Sa'd's jealousy and said God's was greater. Al-Bazzar's report does not show the Prophet correcting Umar. It shows him asking the question, hearing 'I would kill him', and the revelation coming down. The verse sets the procedure in court. It says nothing against the wish to kill.

The chain problem is real, and this entry does not claim the Prophet certainly asked the question. Even the preferred form, though, is a Successor reporting the same story, and al-Haythami and al-Suyuti call the narrators trustworthy. The tradition remembered the occasion of a Qur'anic verse as two leading Companions saying what they would do to a man found with a wife, with killing as one answer.

Check it yourself

'Three things break the back': a bad wife, and a wicked woman whose wickedness equals a thousand wicked women Women Governance Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 5386
"Three things break the back [al-Bazzar: one of them escaped me]: a bad wife whom her husband trusts and she betrays him, and an imam who angers God and pleases the people. The deeds of a believing woman are like the deeds of seventy truthful ones (siddiqs), and the wickedness of a wicked woman is like the wickedness of a thousand wicked women."

What the hadith says

Ibn Umar attributes the saying to the Prophet through Kathir b. Murra, Abu al-Zahiriyya and Sa'id b. Sinan. Al-Bazzar records it (5386; also Kashf al-Astar 1414) and admits that one of the three 'back-breakers' slipped his memory. Al-Haythami supplies it from elsewhere: a bad neighbour who buries any good he sees and spreads any evil. Al-Bazzar's own comment on Sa'id b. Sinan's reports by this route is that they 'were written down only for the beauty of their wording', that Sa'id 'is not a hafiz', and that people narrated from him despite his poor memory (comment after 5387). Al-Haythami says Sa'id is matruk, abandoned (Majma' 7433), and al-Albani grades the report mawdu', fabricated (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

The saying lists a disloyal wife among the three calamities that break a man's back, beside an unjust ruler. It then weighs women's moral lives on an uneven scale. A believing woman's deeds count as those of seventy truthful ones. A wicked woman's wickedness counts as that of a thousand wicked women. The good is multiplied by seventy and the bad by a thousand. (The word for 'wicked' in the last phrase is feminine, so the comparison is with a thousand wicked women, not men.)

Al-Bazzar knew the narrator was weak and said so, and he still copied the saying into his Musnad as a hadith of the Prophet, explaining that such reports were written down because their wording was beautiful.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is fabricated. Al-Albani grades it mawdu', al-Haythami calls its narrator abandoned, and al-Bazzar himself warns that Sa'id b. Sinan was no hafiz. Nothing in it can be attributed to the Prophet or used for doctrine. The same text also praises the believing woman generously.

Why it fails

That is correct, and the entry is rated Basic for that reason. What remains is what the tradition did with it. A collector who judged the narrator weak still kept the saying because it sounded well, and al-Haythami's Majma' copied it again into its chapter on women. The interest of the report is the outlook it shows. Weak transmitters put this saying into the Prophet's mouth, and hadith scholars passed it on: a wife as a calamity, and a woman's sin worth a thousand.

Check it yourself

'Whoever keeps servant-women beyond those he sleeps with, and they fornicate, bears their sin' Slavery & Captives Sexual Issues Women Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 2536
"Whoever takes, from among the servants, others than those he has intercourse with, and then they fornicate, upon him is the like of their sins, without anything being taken away from their sins."

What the hadith says

Salman al-Farisi is made to say he heard the Prophet say this, through 'Ata' b. Yasar, Salama b. Kulthum and Sa'id b. al-Hurr. The verb for the servants' fornication is feminine, so the servants are women. The verb for the master's relation to them (yankihu) can mean 'marries' or 'has intercourse with'. Al-Bazzar records it (2536). Al-Haythami places it under the heading 'The rights of concubines' (sarari) and notes that 'Ata' never met Salman and that the chain contains men he does not know (Majma' 7587). On the dorar.net cards, al-Albani grades it da'if and Ibn al-Qattan says it is not sound. Several of the cards say they found it only in al-Bazzar in this wording.

Why this is a problem

The saying assumes a household of female servants, some of whom are the master's sexual partners. The others, the ones he does not take, are treated as a moral hazard. They will fall into fornication, and the sin is charged to the man who kept them unattached. Al-Haythami's heading reads it the same way, as a rule about concubines. The text does not say what the master should do instead. It does not, for instance, mention freeing them.

This premise does not depend on the weak chain. The canonical books treat sex with female captives as ordinary. Abu Sa'id says, 'We got female captives and we used to practise coitus interruptus with them,' and the question put to the Prophet was about withdrawal, not about the women's consent (Bukhari 5210).

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak and its chain broken, so it cannot be attributed to the Prophet. They add that its intent is to make a master responsible for the chastity of the people in his care, not to encourage anything; dorar.net files it under encouraging marriage and the marriage of slaves (dorar.net cards).

Why it fails

On authenticity the response is right, and the entry is rated Basic. But 'responsibility for their chastity' is the point at issue. In this saying the master's duty is measured by his own sexual access: the women of his household who are not his partners are the problem. That framing comes from a world in which a man owned women as property and could take them to bed, and the canonical Bukhari 5210 shows the same world without any weak link in the chain. The report survived because it fitted that world, and al-Haythami filed it under the rights of concubines.

Check it yourself

On slaves: 'If they do wrong, pardon them; if they get the better of you, sell them' Slavery & Captives Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 5404
"About slaves: if they do well, accept it; if they do wrong, pardon them; and if they get the better of you, sell them."

What the hadith says

Ibn Umar reports this as the Prophet's instruction about slaves, through Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman [Ibn al-Baylamani] from his father. Al-Bazzar records it (5404), and al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar 1391 places it in the Book of Manumission under 'Enjoining good treatment of slaves'. There al-Bazzar comments that 'Muhammad b. al-Baylamani is weak according to the scholars.' Al-Haythami's Majma' names a different weak man, 'Asim b. 'Ubayd Allah (Majma' 7215), but he does not appear in the chain as printed in either book. Al-Albani nonetheless grades the saying sahih li-ghayrihi, sound because other reports support it (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

This is the humane end of the tradition on slavery, and it is still a manual for handling property. The slave who serves well is accepted, and the slave who errs is forgiven. The slave who 'gets the better of you', who cannot be managed, is to be sold. A human being who resists is passed on to the market and to another owner.

Al-Albani accepts it as sound through supporting reports. A modern authority therefore treats 'sell them' as the Prophet's guidance, and the guidance was filed in the chapter on treating slaves well.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the saying commands pardon before anything else, and that selling an unhappy slave can be a mercy, since it frees him from an owner he cannot live with. Other reports tell owners to feed their slaves from what they eat and clothe them from what they wear (Bukhari 30). The chain in al-Bazzar is weak in any case, as al-Bazzar himself says.

Why it fails

The pardon clause is real, and the entry does not deny it. But the last resort the text gives is sale, not freedom. Manumission was available, and the chapter in which al-Haythami files this saying is the Book of Manumission. The answer for a slave who cannot be managed is to transfer him to another owner. Bukhari 30 asks owners to share their food and clothing, and it too leaves the ownership itself in place. Nor does the weak chain dispose of the instruction: Abu Dawud 5161, graded sahih on sunnah.com, says of slaves who do not suit their owners, 'sell them, and do not torment God's creatures' (Abu Dawud 5161).

Check it yourself

At Hunayn: 'Shear them a shearing', and he pointed his hand to the throat Warfare & Jihad Disbelievers Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 1830)
"On the day of Hunayn he said: 'Shear them a shearing (juzzuhum jazzan)', and he pointed with his hand to the throat."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik reports, through Thumama, 'Abd Allah b. al-Muthanna and his son Muhammad, that the Prophet said this at the battle of Hunayn. Jazz is the word for shearing wool or cutting down dates. The gesture to the throat shows what was meant. The report comes from al-Bazzar's Musnad as preserved in al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar 1830. It has not been located in the surviving, incomplete printing of the Musnad itself. Al-Bazzar says that only Anas narrated it and only by this route. Al-Haythami says its narrators are trustworthy (Majma' 10270), and al-Diya' al-Maqdisi included the report in his al-Ahadith al-Mukhtara, a selection of reports not in al-Bukhari and Muslim (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

This is a battlefield order, and the entry treats it as one. The point is the language. Men are to be shorn like sheep, and the Prophet makes the meaning plain with a hand at the throat. The chain has trustworthy narrators according to al-Haythami, and a later hadith scholar selected it, in a version without the gesture, for his collection of reports he considered sound.

The same idiom is in Sahih Muslim, on a different day. At the conquest of Mecca the Prophet pointed out the Quraysh's followers to the Ansar and, striking one hand on the other, said 'Harvest them a harvest' (Muslim 1780b). Abu Hurayra adds that after this 'if any one of us wanted that a certain person should be killed, he was killed, and none could offer any resistance' (Muslim 1780a). Shearing and harvesting are the words of a man reaping a crop.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that at Hunayn the Hawazin had gathered and attacked the Muslims, and that ordering soldiers to cut down an attacking army is war, not murder. Every army in history has been told to kill the enemy in battle, and vivid words do not change the moral status of a defensive fight.

Why it fails

Granting the battlefield, the order is still what it is: kill them, said with a gesture to the throat. The Meccan parallel in Muslim shows that this language was not reserved for armies in the field. At Mecca the enemy was a gathering of Quraysh's followers, and Abu Hurayra's own account says that anyone the Muslims wanted killed was killed while no one resisted. Al-Bazzar's report is a small piece of evidence, but it fits the canonical picture, and al-Haythami and al-Diya' both treated its chain with respect.

Check it yourself

'I will kill a man of Quraysh today, bound': 'Uqba asks why, and is told 'for your disbelief in God' Warfare & Jihad Disbelievers Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 1781)
"'I will kill a man of Quraysh today, bound.' 'Uqba b. Abi Mu'ayt called out at the top of his voice: 'Men of Quraysh, why am I, of all of you, to be killed bound?' The Messenger of God said: 'For your disbelief in God and your lying against the Messenger of God.'"

What the hadith says

Ibn Abbas reports, through 'Ikrima, Salama b. Kuhayl and his son Yahya, that the Prophet announced he would kill a man of Quraysh 'bound' (sabran), that is, put to death as a captive rather than in combat. 'Uqba b. Abi Mu'ayt asked why he had been singled out, and was told: for his disbelief in God and his lying against the Messenger. The report comes from al-Bazzar's Musnad as preserved in al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar 1781, in the chapter on Badr. It has not been located in the surviving, incomplete printing of the Musnad. Al-Bazzar says he knows it only from Ibn Abbas by this chain. Al-Haythami says Yahya b. Salama is weak, though Ibn Hibban declared him trustworthy (Majma' 10016).

Why this is a problem

The execution itself is canonical. When the Prophet intended to kill 'Uqba, 'Uqba asked who would look after his children and was told: 'The Fire' (Abu Dawud 2686). On the same page of the Majma', al-Haythami cites al-Tabarani's report that the ransom for each Badr prisoner was four thousand, that 'Uqba was killed before the ransom was taken, and that 'Ali killed him bound, with narrators of the Sahih (Majma' 10017).

Al-Bazzar's report adds two things. The Prophet announces in advance that a Qurayshi captive will die. When the captive asks why, the reason he gives is a matter of belief and speech: 'your disbelief in God and your lying against the Messenger of God'. Most of the other prisoners were ransomed. In this report, this one was killed for what he believed and said.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that 'Uqba was no ordinary unbeliever. In Mecca he had persecuted the Prophet, and he is named in al-Bukhari among the Quraysh whom the Prophet cursed after a camel's entrails were thrown on his back while he prayed at the Ka'ba (Bukhari 240). His execution was punishment for those crimes. In any case the chain of al-Bazzar's version is weak (dorar.net).

Why it fails

Bukhari 240 does show the hostility, and the chain of al-Bazzar's report is weak, which is why the entry is rated Moderate rather than Strong. But the one report that puts a reason in the Prophet's mouth gives no crime of that kind. It gives disbelief and 'lying against the Messenger', which is an offence of speech. 'Uqba was a prisoner who could have been ransomed like the others, and in the canonical report, when he asked who would look after his children, the answer was 'The Fire'. The tradition preserved this as the Prophet's own explanation of why a bound captive died.

Check it yourself

'If I appoint a successor and you disobey him, punishment will come down on you': why the Prophet named no one Governance Prophetic Character Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 2895
"They said: 'Messenger of God, will you not appoint a successor over us?' He said: 'If I appoint a successor over you and you disobey my successor, punishment will be sent down on you.' ... They said: 'Will you not appoint 'Ali?' He said: 'If you appoint him (and you will not), he will take you along the road, and you will find him a guide and rightly guided.'"

What the hadith says

Hudhayfa reports, through Abu Wa'il and Abu al-Yaqzan 'Uthman b. 'Umayr, that people asked the Prophet to appoint a successor. He refused, saying that if they disobeyed his appointee, punishment would come down on them. Asked about Abu Bakr, he said they would find him 'weak in his body, strong in God's command'; about Umar, 'strong in his body, strong in God's command'; about 'Ali, the words quoted above. Al-Bazzar records it (2895; also Kashf al-Astar 1570, where one transmitter differs) and says it is known from Hudhayfa only by this chain. Al-Haythami says Abu al-Yaqzan is weak (Majma' 8910).

Why this is a problem

The canonical record agrees that the Prophet left the succession open. When Umar was asked to name his own successor, he said that one better than he, the Messenger of God, had left the matter undecided (Bukhari 7218). Al-Bazzar's report supplies a reason. The Prophet did not name a leader because his people might disobey that leader and bring punishment on themselves. On who should lead the community after his death, he chose to name no one.

The 'Ali clause makes it sharper. The Prophet describes 'Ali as a guide on the right road and in the same breath predicts 'you will not' appoint him. A Sunni reader finds the community's free choice in it. A Shi'i reader finds a prophecy that the community would pass over the rightly guided man. The text supports neither as a designation, and both sides can use it.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report, whatever its weakness, shows that the Prophet deliberately left the choice of leader to the community, and that he spoke well of Abu Bakr, Umar and 'Ali alike. They add that its chain rests on Abu al-Yaqzan, whom al-Haythami calls weak, so nothing should be built on its details (dorar.net).

Why it fails

The weakness is granted, and the entry is rated Basic. But the fact behind it, that no successor was named, is canonical, and the explanation this report offers is not reassuring. The risk that people might disobey did not stop the Prophet from commanding anything else. The tradition preserved a justification for his silence, and that justification concedes that the question was left open.

Check it yourself

'Being killed bound passes by no sin but it erases it' Hudud Warfare & Jihad Basic Musnad al-Bazzar, Musnad A'isha 41 (vol. 18)
"Being killed bound (qatl al-sabr) passes by no sin but it erases it."

What the hadith says

A'isha attributes the saying to the Prophet, through 'Urwa, Hisham b. 'Urwa, 'Anbasa b. Sa'id and Ya'qub b. 'Abd Allah. Qatl al-sabr is being put to death while held, as a captive or condemned man, rather than falling in a fight. Al-Bazzar records it in the Musnad of A'isha (vol. 18, no. 41; this volume numbers its reports afresh; also Kashf al-Astar 1545) and says it is known from the Prophet only by this route, and that only Ya'qub, from 'Anbasa, gave Hisham's hadith a full chain. Al-Haythami puts it in a chapter on 'expiations of sins by being killed' and says its narrators are trustworthy (Majma' 10602). The gradings conflict. On the dorar.net cards, Ibn Hibban calls 'Anbasa b. Sa'id 'very munkar in hadith', and Ibn Kathir and al-'Ayni say it is not sound, while al-Albani grades its chain hasan.

Why this is a problem

The saying is about the person killed, not a licence to kill, and the entry reads it that way. What it does is turn an execution into a spiritual favour: the death of a bound captive or a condemned man wipes out his sins. It makes no distinction between a just killing and an unjust one. Al-Haythami gives a second version from al-Bazzar, from Abu Hurayra: 'The killing of a man bound is an expiation for the sins before it.' Its narrator, Salih b. Musa, is abandoned (Majma' 10601).

Al-Albani's hasan grading means that a leading modern authority accepts the saying as the Prophet's. A theology in which execution cleanses the person executed makes it easier to accept executions.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the saying consoles the victims of killing, especially those killed unjustly, and that Islamic law itself discourages killing a bound captive. A report in Abu Dawud 2687 has Abu Ayyub citing the Prophet's prohibition of it, though sunnah.com grades that report da'if. Several major critics, Ibn Kathir and al-'Ayni among them, also reject al-Bazzar's report as unsound.

Why it fails

The consolation reading is fair, and the polemical weight is limited, so the entry is rated Basic. The critics disagree, and al-Albani's grading keeps the saying in circulation as sound. It belongs to a tradition in which captives were in fact killed bound, as 'Uqba b. Abi Mu'ayt was after Badr (Abu Dawud 2686). This saying's answer to such deaths is that they purify the one who dies; it does not call them wrong.

Check it yourself

'A raid is better than forty pilgrimages' Warfare & Jihad Ritual Absurdities Basic Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 1651)
"A hajj is better than forty raids, and a raid is better than forty hajjs. He means: once a man has made the hajj of Islam, a raid is better for him than forty hajjs, and the hajj of Islam is better than forty raids."

What the hadith says

Ibn Abbas attributes the saying to the Prophet, through 'Ikrima and 'Anbasa b. Hubayra al-Ta'i. The text explains its own riddle: the obligatory first pilgrimage outranks forty raids, but after it a single military raid (ghazwa) outranks forty further pilgrimages. The explanation may be a transmitter's gloss. The report comes from al-Bazzar's Musnad as preserved in al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar 1651, under 'The merit of jihad'. It has not been located in the surviving printing of the Musnad. Al-Bazzar says it is known from the Prophet only by this chain and that only one man narrated from 'Anbasa. Al-Haythami says its narrators are trustworthy, noting that Ibn Hibban declared 'Anbasa trustworthy and al-Dhahabi called him unknown (Majma' 9440). Al-Mundhiri called its narrators 'trustworthy and known', but al-Albani grades it da'if (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The pilgrimage to Mecca is a pillar of Islam, and here a single raid is worth forty of them. The word is ghazwa, a military expedition. Once the duty of pilgrimage is done, the believer's time is better spent in war than in further pilgrimages.

This ranking is not peculiar to a weak chain. In al-Bukhari, asked which deed is best, the Prophet names belief, then jihad, and only then an accepted hajj (Bukhari 26). Al-Bazzar's report puts a number on the gap.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak, as al-Albani judged (dorar.net cards), and that the jihad it praises was the defence of the early community against enemies who sought to destroy it, not aggression for its own sake.

Why it fails

The grading is fairly stated, and the entry is rated Basic. The 'defence' reading, though, is not in the text. A ghazwa is an expedition, and the saying weighs it against further pilgrimages without saying who is being fought or why. Al-Mundhiri, in his al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib, presented its narrators as trustworthy and known, and the canonical Bukhari 26 already puts jihad above the hajj.

Check it yourself

Anal intercourse with one's wife: 'That is the minor sodomy' Sexual Issues Women Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 1455)
"He was asked about the man who comes to his wife in her anus, and said: 'That is the minor sodomy (al-lutiyya al-sughra).'"

What the hadith says

'Abd Allah b. 'Amr is the source, through 'Amr b. Shu'ayb, his father and grandfather, Qatada and Hammam. Asked about a man who has anal intercourse with his wife, the Prophet is reported to have called it 'the minor lutiyya', a lesser form of the act of Lot's people. The report comes from al-Bazzar's Musnad as preserved in al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar 1455, under 'The prohibition of coming to women in their anus'. Al-Bazzar adds: 'I know of no sound hadith on this subject' (p. 173). Al-Haythami says the narrators of Ahmad and al-Bazzar are men of the Sahih (Majma' 7591). Whether the words are the Prophet's is disputed. On the dorar.net cards, al-Bukhari says it is not sound, Ibn Hajar says the preserved form is 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr's own saying, and Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades the chain hasan but says 'the version stopping at the Companion is more correct'. Al-Albani grades it hasan as the Prophet's.

Why this is a problem

The report takes an act between a husband and his own wife and names it after the sin of Lot's people. The prohibition itself is known from other reports, such as 'Accursed is he who comes to his wife in her anus' (Abu Dawud 2162). This report adds the label, and with it the comparison to Lot's people.

The label is also uncertain in origin. Al-Bukhari rejects it, and Ibn Hajar and al-Arna'ut hold that the preserved form is a Companion's own saying, yet it circulates in al-Bazzar and Ahmad as words of the Prophet, and al-Albani and others grade it hasan as such. The collector who preserved it said in the same place that he knew no sound hadith on the subject at all.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the ruling does not depend on this report. Anal intercourse is forbidden in Islamic law on other evidence, and whether 'minor sodomy' was said by the Prophet or by 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr, a Companion known for his knowledge, the ruling is the same. Calling it a lesser form of a grave sin is a moral warning, not a call for punishment (dorar.net cards).

Why it fails

The ruling may stand on other evidence, but al-Bazzar himself doubted that evidence, and that is the problem. A rule about the most private part of married life is held up by reports whose early collector called none of them sound, and later graders upgraded them. A phrase that Ibn Hajar and al-Arna'ut assign to a Companion has been passed on, and is still graded hasan, as the Prophet's words. The comparison with Lot's people is presented as the Prophet's words even though Ibn Hajar and al-Arna'ut trace it to a Companion's own judgement.

Check it yourself

Ibn al-Zubayr at the Ka'ba: 'God cursed al-Hakam and what he begot, on the tongue of His Prophet' Governance Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 2197
"By the Lord of this House, God has cursed al-Hakam and what he begot, on the tongue of His Prophet."

What the hadith says

Al-Sha'bi says he heard 'Abd Allah b. al-Zubayr, leaning against the Ka'ba, swear this. These are Ibn al-Zubayr's own words, reporting a curse he says God spoke through the Prophet. Al-Hakam b. Abi al-'As was the father of Marwan, from whom the Marwanid line of Umayyad caliphs descends. Al-Bazzar records it through 'Abd al-Razzaq, Sufyan b. 'Uyayna and Isma'il b. Abi Khalid (2197; also Kashf al-Astar 1623). He says he knows these words from Ibn al-Zubayr only by this route, and adds that Muhammad b. Fudayl also narrated them from Isma'il. On the dorar.net cards, al-Hakim calls the chain sound, al-Albani says 'its chain is sound', and Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades it sahih.

Why this is a problem

The site's Musnad Ahmad entry on the 'cursed man' who walked in, identified as al-Hakam, notes that the report does not curse Marwan or the Umayyads. This one does extend the curse. A Companion swears by the Lord of the Ka'ba that God cursed al-Hakam 'and what he begot', and the chain to him is graded sound. 'What he begot' takes in his son Marwan and, through him, a dynasty of caliphs.

A curse on a man's offspring falls on people not yet born, for something their father did. The Qur'an says 'no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another' (Q6:164). Either the Prophet cursed a family line, or a Companion swore at the Ka'ba to a curse the Prophet never uttered.

The Muslim response

Sunni scholars answer that a curse on al-Hakam does not make every descendant cursed. The righteous among his line, such as Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz, are excepted, and a curse attaches to the deeds that deserve it (dorar.net). They also note the setting. Ibn al-Zubayr fought the Umayyads for the caliphate, so his oath may be a political statement and should be read as one.

Why it fails

The exception is not in the text. 'What he begot' is unqualified, and the speaker put no limit on it. The political setting does not rescue the report either. If Ibn al-Zubayr was reporting truly, the Prophet cursed a whole line. If he was stretching the Prophet's words to win a war, then a Companion swore falsely by the Lord of the Ka'ba about the Prophet, in a report later critics grade sound. Either way the tradition preserved the Prophet's curse in the mouth of a man who fought that family for the caliphate.

Check it yourself

'Jealousy is from faith, and al-midha' is from hypocrisy': the man who is not jealous over his women Women Basic Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 1490)
"'Jealousy is part of faith, and al-midha' is part of hypocrisy.' I said: 'What is al-midha'?' He said: 'The one who is not jealous.'"

What the hadith says

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri attributes the saying to the Prophet, through 'Ata' b. Yasar, Zayd b. Aslam and Abu Marhum. The report comes from al-Bazzar's Musnad as preserved in al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar 1490, under 'Jealousy is from faith'. It has not been located in the surviving printing of the Musnad. Al-Bazzar says he knows it in this wording only by this chain, with no one sharing it with Abu Marhum. In the Majma', al-Haythami places it in his chapter on jealousy, beside reports on the man who lets men in to his womenfolk, and says Abu Marhum was declared trustworthy by al-Nasa'i and others and weak by Ibn Ma'in, while the rest are men of the Sahih (Majma' 7725). On the dorar.net cards, al-Albani grades it da'if, Ibn al-Qattan says it is not sound, and al-Suyuti marks it hasan.

Why this is a problem

The jealousy meant here is a man's guard over the women of his household, and the saying makes it a mark of faith. A man who lacks it is labelled with hypocrisy. A husband's guard over his household becomes a test of his religion.

The canonical books supply the foundation: 'I am more jealous than Sa'd, and God is more jealous than I' (Bukhari 6846). In Kashf al-Astar, the report placed immediately after this one is 'Ali's account of the rumour about Mariya and her Coptic cousin, in which the Prophet hands him a sword: 'If you find him with her, kill him' (same page).

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that protective jealousy (ghayra) is a virtue that guards family honour, as every culture recognises, and that Islam also condemns excessive or suspicious jealousy. The report is weak in any case, according to al-Albani and Ibn al-Qattan (dorar.net).

Why it fails

The grading is disputed rather than settled, since al-Suyuti calls it hasan, but the entry is rated Basic. The problem is the ranking, not the virtue. In this saying jealousy belongs to faith and its absence to hypocrisy. Al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar sets it beside a sword handed over on a rumour. The idea that a man proves his religion by guarding his women was transmitted as the Prophet's teaching, whatever the strength of this chain.

Check it yourself

'God accepts nothing from the saqqur': the man who lets men in upon his womenfolk Women Sexual Issues Basic Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 1489)
"'God will not accept from the saqqur, on the Day of Resurrection, any sarf or 'adl.' We said: 'Messenger of God, what is the saqqur?' He said: 'The one who brings men in upon his family.'"

What the hadith says

Malik b. Uhaymir says he heard the Prophet say this, through Abu Razin al-Bahili and Musa b. Ya'qub. The report comes from al-Bazzar's Musnad as preserved in al-Haythami's Kashf al-Astar 1489, under the heading 'The man who is content with indecency for his family'. It has not been located in the surviving printing of the Musnad. 'His family' (ahlihi) means his wife or the women of his household. The phrase sarf wa-la 'adl is explained in different ways, for example as 'neither repentance nor ransom' or 'neither obligatory nor voluntary deeds'. Either way, nothing he offers is accepted. Al-Bazzar says this is the only report Malik narrated. Al-Haythami says Abu Razin al-Bahili is unknown to him and the rest are trustworthy (Majma' 7723), and al-Albani grades it da'if (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

On the Day of Judgement God will accept nothing at all from the man who lets other men in to the women of his house. In this text the women's chastity is the man's responsibility and the man's damnation. The women themselves are not addressed. They are something a husband admits others to or keeps others from.

The heading in Kashf narrows the sense to a man who tolerates indecency, and the entry reads it that way. Even so, the punishment is absolute. Nothing from such a man is accepted, while the text says nothing of the men he let in or of the women.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report condemns a husband who knowingly lets his household be used for immorality, which every moral code condemns. It does not condemn hospitality to guests, and in any case it is weak because one narrator is unknown (dorar.net).

Why it fails

The response is largely right, and the entry is rated Basic. What the report shows is how the moral question was framed. The sin is placed on the man as guardian, and the women appear only as his responsibility. Al-Haythami's Majma' sets it beside a report on the dayyuth, glossed there as 'the one who does not care who comes in to his family' (Majma' 7722). The tradition carried the same idea in more than one form.

Check it yourself

The women's delegate asks about jihad: 'Obedience to the husband equals that, and few of you do it' Women Warfare & Jihad Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 5209
"Tell the women you meet that obedience to the husband and acknowledging his right equals that, and few of you do it."

What the hadith says

Ibn Abbas reports, through Kurayb, Rishdin b. Kurayb and Mindal, that a woman came to the Prophet as 'the delegate of the women'. God had prescribed jihad for men, she said: if they toil they are rewarded, and if killed they are 'alive with their Lord, provided for', while 'we women look after them. What do we get from that?' He told her to pass on the words quoted above. Al-Bazzar records it (5209; also Kashf al-Astar 1474) and says it is known from the Prophet only by this route, adding that trustworthy scholars narrated from Rishdin and tolerated his hadith. Al-Haythami says Rishdin is weak (Majma' 7631), and al-Mundhiri says the report 'is not even open to being graded hasan' (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

A woman asks a fair question. The men have jihad and its rewards, and what is there for the women who support them? The answer does not point to her own faith, prayer or courage. It points to her husband: obedience to him, and acknowledging his right over her, is the women's equivalent of fighting for God. The answer ends by saying that few women do it.

The canonical answer to the same kind of question was different and milder. When A'isha asked to join the jihad, the Prophet said, 'Your jihad is the hajj' (Bukhari 2875). Al-Bazzar's report replaces the pilgrimage with the husband.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report honours women's domestic work and marital loyalty by making them equal in reward to the men's struggle, which is generous, not demeaning. In any case it is weak. Al-Mundhiri judged it beyond any grading of hasan, and al-Haythami calls its narrator weak.

Why it fails

On the chain the response is right, and the entry is rated Basic. The generous reading still has to explain why the route to equal reward runs through obedience to the husband rather than through the woman's own worship. It also has to explain why the answer ends by saying that 'few of you' manage it. Al-Bazzar, who knew Rishdin's weakness, wrote the report into his Musnad and said scholars tolerated its narrator. The tradition found this picture of women's merit worth keeping.

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'If a woman knew her husband's right, she would stay standing while his lunch and dinner were served' Women Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 712
"O women, fear God and seek your husbands' approval; for if a woman knew what her husband's right is, she would not stop standing as long as his lunch and his dinner are present."

What the hadith says

'Ali attributes the saying to the Prophet, through 'Abd Allah b. Salima, 'Amr b. Murra, 'Abd al-Ghaffar b. al-Qasim and al-Hakam b. Ya'la al-Muharibi. The standing meant is standing in attendance while the husband eats. Al-Bazzar records it (712; also Kashf al-Astar 1459) and says it is known from 'Ali only by this route. Al-Haythami says al-Hakam b. Ya'la is matruk, abandoned (Majma' 7646), and al-Albani grades it mawdu', fabricated (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

The picture is of a wife who, if she truly understood her husband's rights, would not stop standing as long as his lunch and dinner were present. Her religious duty ('fear God') is joined directly to his approval.

The idea did not travel by one chain only. Al-Haythami's next entry is a version from Mu'adh b. Jabal, in al-Bazzar and al-Tabarani: 'If a woman knew the husband's right, she would not sit while his lunch and dinner are present until he finishes.' He notes an unknown narrator in it and says the rest are trustworthy (Majma' 7647). Ibn Hajar called the chain of this version hasan, and al-Albani first graded it sahih, then retracted and called it da'if (dorar.net cards).

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is fabricated, according to al-Albani, and that its narrator is abandoned, according to al-Haythami. It binds no one and says nothing about how Muslim wives are expected to behave (dorar.net card).

Why it fails

That is correct, and the entry is rated Basic. The interest of the report is that it was put into the Prophet's mouth at all, and that it was kept. Al-Bazzar recorded it, and al-Haythami collected it along with a second version from another Companion, so that the same image of the standing wife reached later readers through two different routes.

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At Uhud a man prays 'O God, if Muhammad is in the right, make the earth swallow ...', and it swallows him Disbelievers Strange / Obscure Warfare & Jihad Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 4416
"A man said on the day of Uhud: 'O God, if Muhammad is in the right, make [the earth] swallow him [al-Haythami's text: me]', and he was swallowed."

What the hadith says

Burayda b. al-Husayb reports, through his son 'Abd Allah, al-Husayn b. Waqid and Zayd b. al-Hubab, that on the day of Uhud an unnamed man called on God to prove Muhammad's truth by making the earth swallow, and the earth swallowed him. Al-Bazzar's printed text reads 'swallow him' (4416). Al-Haythami's copy reads 'swallow me', which makes it a self-curse, and he files it under 'Those of the unbelievers whom the earth swallowed on the day of Uhud', saying its narrators are men of the Sahih (Majma' 10115). Al-Salihi calls its chain hasan (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

This is a punishment miracle. A public sign on a battlefield, it is reported by one Companion and is known here from a single chain. The man has no name, and the canonical collections do not record the event. Al-Haythami nonetheless judged the narrators to be men of the Sahih, and al-Salihi graded it hasan, so as hadith it is respectable.

It also sits awkwardly with the Qur'an's own account of a similar challenge. When Abu Jahl prayed, 'O God, if this is indeed the truth from You, rain down stones on us', the answer revealed was that God would not punish them while the Prophet was among them (Bukhari 4648; Q8:32-33). At Uhud the Prophet was present, and in this report the earth opens anyway.

The Muslim response

Muslims present the report as one of the signs that confirmed the Prophet's truth: a man who mocked him by calling down God's judgement received it. No specific Muslim answer to the tension with Q8:33 was found in the sources for this entry. One could reply that the verse concerns a general punishment of the Meccans, not the death of one man in battle.

Why it fails

That reply may be the right reading of Q8:33, and the entry is rated Basic. The report remains a one-chain miracle story with an anonymous victim, attached to a known battle and graded respectably by later scholars. It shows how readily such stories entered the hadith literature and were filed as history. Al-Haythami's chapter heading treats it as an event, not a legend.

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'The adornment of this world will be lifted in the year 125' Eschatology Prophetic Character Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 1027
"The adornment of this world will be lifted in the year one hundred and twenty-five."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Rahman b. Awf, through his son Abu Salama and al-Zuhri, reports the Prophet saying that the adornment (zina) of this world 'will be lifted in the year one hundred and twenty-five'. That is the whole report. Al-Bazzar records it (1027) and says he knows it only from Abd al-Rahman and by no other route; al-Haythami copies it into his collection of al-Bazzar's extra reports (Kashf al-Astar 3292) and, in his Majma', notes that Abu Ya'la has it too and that its chain 'contains Mus'ab b. Mus'ab, who is weak' (Majma' 12091). Other verdicts are harsher: Ibn al-Jawzi lists it among fabrications (mawdu'), Ibn Adi calls it munkar (objectionable) and Ibn Kathir 'strange and objectionable' (dorar.net cards). The text names no era; read as a Hijri year, 125 fell in AD 742-43.

Why this is a problem

A prophecy with a date is the one kind that can be checked, and this one carries the Prophet's name, a chain through well-known names (al-Zuhri, Abu Salama) and a precise year. What it does not carry is any content. It does not say what 'lifting the adornment' means, so it cannot be read as a prediction of the end of the world, and no reader can say what was supposed to happen. The only fixed point in it is the year, and the year passed.

The report shows how a dated prediction could travel under the Prophet's name into a major Musnad. Al-Bazzar's own note is about how rare the chain is, not about whether a saying that sets a calendar date for the decline of the world is plausible, and al-Haythami's stated objection is one weak narrator.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars answer that the Prophet never said it. Ibn al-Jawzi classed it as fabricated, Ibn Adi and Ibn Kathir as objectionable, and al-Haythami points to a weak transmitter. A report rejected by the tradition's own critics cannot be used to show that Muhammad made a failed prediction.

Why it fails

On the attribution the Muslim answer is right, and this entry does not claim that Muslims must believe it. The point is what the transmission process let through: a report that puts a calendar date for the world's decline in the Prophet's mouth reached al-Bazzar, Abu Ya'la and al-Haythami's collections with a chain through Abu Salama and al-Zuhri. The verdicts on record are judgements on that chain. As preserved, the saying is so vague about what would happen that only its date could ever be tested.

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'All that you are promised is within a hundred years' Eschatology Prophetic Character Contradictions Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 4175
"And all that you are promised is within a hundred years."

What the hadith says

Thawban, the Prophet's freedman, reports the Prophet saying: 'And all that you are promised is within a hundred years.' Al-Bazzar's Musnad has it in Thawban's section (4175), where the verb reads 'they are promised' (yu'adun); al-Haythami's copy of al-Bazzar's extra reports reads 'you are promised' (Kashf al-Astar 3293). The sentence opens with 'and', so it is the end of a longer saying, and it does not say what 'you are promised'. Al-Bazzar notes that only Thawban has it in this wording and that Ma'mar wrongly named Shaddad b. Aws as the Companion (Kashf, next page). Al-Haythami grades the chain good (isnaduhu hasan, Majma' 12094), as does al-Suyuti; al-Albani grades it weak (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The canonical collections already tie the Prophet's horizon to a century. In Muslim 2538a, a month before his death, he answers people asking about the Hour: 'its knowledge is with God', but he swears that no living soul then on earth will see a hundred years pass. Al-Bazzar's line goes further. It is not about that generation dying; it says all that is promised falls within a hundred years. On the same Majma' page al-Mustawrid b. Shaddad's report says the same in so many words: 'every community has a term, and my community's term is a hundred years; when a hundred years pass over my community, what God promised it will come to it' (Majma' 12092-12093, Abu Ya'la and al-Tabarani).

In the Qur'an, 'what you are promised' is the language of the coming judgement: 'Indeed, what you are promised is coming' (Q 6:134), 'what you are promised is true' (Q 51:5), 'what you are promised will occur' (Q 77:7). A report whose chain al-Haythami graded good puts 'all that you are promised' inside a century. That century ended long ago.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report does not name the Hour. The transmitter Ibn Lahi'a glossed the parallel century report as meaning 'many trials' (kathrat al-fitan), and the canonical Muslim 2538 is understood as the end of the Prophet's generation, not of the world. Al-Albani also grades al-Bazzar's report weak.

Why it fails

The 'trials' reading is a later transmitter's gloss, recorded by al-Haythami beside a chain he calls weak because of that same Ibn Lahi'a. Nothing in the text limits 'all that you are promised' to trials, and the Qur'anic use of the phrase points the other way. The entry does not claim the report names the Day of Judgement; it says the promise was given a hundred-year limit, and al-Mustawrid's report on the same page says the same.

On grading, al-Albani's 'weak' stands against al-Haythami's and al-Suyuti's 'good'. Even setting al-Bazzar aside, the canonical Muslim 2538 links the century to a question about the Hour, which is why the gloss was needed.

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'The Qur'an was sent down in three ahruf', not seven Scripture Integrity Contradictions Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 4563
"The Qur'an was sent down in three ahruf."

What the hadith says

Samura b. Jundub reports the Prophet saying: 'The Qur'an was sent down in three ahruf' (modes). Al-Bazzar records it (4563) and says only Hammad b. Salama has it from Qatada and the wording is known only from Samura. A longer form in the same Musnad (4612) reads: 'He used to order us to recite the Qur'an as he had taught us, and said: It was sent down in three ahruf, so do not differ about it and do not shun it, for all of it is blessed; recite it as you were taught it.' Al-Haythami records Samura's report in two forms, 'seven ahruf' and, in another version, 'three'. He says the narrators of Ahmad, of one of al-Tabarani's chains and of al-Bazzar are men of the Sahih, but calls both chains of the long form weak (Majma' 11576-11577, 11580). Al-Hakim and al-Suyuti grade it sound (sahih); al-Arna'ut and al-Albani grade it weak (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The standard number is seven: 'This Qur'an has been revealed to be recited in seven different ways' (Bukhari 4992). The ahruf are not a side issue; they are the tradition's explanation of why Companions recited the same sura differently. Here the same Companion is quoted for seven and for three, and al-Haythami gives the 'three' version a chain of Sahih narrators.

The long form shows the number was being used as a ruling: there are three modes, so stop disputing and recite as taught. No canonical report says the Qur'an 'was sent down' in three. The one place three appears is Muslim 821a, where Gabriel raises the number from one to two to three before settling on seven.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars harmonise the two numbers. Al-Tahawi placed this report in Mushkil al-Athar, his book on reports that seem to conflict, and al-Arna'ut's note there calls its narrators trustworthy (dorar.net cards). One reading takes 'three' as a stage before the final seven, as in Muslim 821a; another takes it as part of the seven. Al-Albani and al-Arna'ut also grade the report weak.

Why it fails

The stage reading fits Muslim 821a, where three is explicitly a step in a negotiation. It does not fit al-Bazzar's text, which reports a settled fact, 'it was sent down in three', and tells the listeners to stop arguing on that basis. A subset reading needs a definition of the seven that the reports themselves do not supply.

The grading does not settle it either: al-Hakim and al-Suyuti accept the report and al-Albani and al-Arna'ut reject it. Either way, the tradition preserved two numbers from one Companion for the modes in which God revealed his book, and harmonising them had to be done afterwards.

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Anas recites 'asdaqu qilan' for 'aqwamu qilan': 'aqwam and asdaq are the same' Scripture Integrity Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 7565
"He was told: 'It is read wa-aqwamu.' He said: 'Aqwam and asdaq are one.'"

What the hadith says

Al-A'mash says he heard Anas b. Malik, on God's words 'wa-aqwamu qilan' (Q 73:6, 'and more suitable for words'), say: 'wa-asdaqu' ('and more truthful'). He was told, 'It is read wa-aqwamu,' and answered: 'Aqwam and asdaq are one.' These are Anas's own words, not the Prophet's. Al-Bazzar records it (7565), says only Abd al-Hamid al-Himmani has it from al-A'mash, and on the next page explains that he cited it to show that al-A'mash had heard from Anas (7566). Al-Haythami says Abu Ya'la has it similarly, reading 'wa-aswabu qilan' and quoting Anas: 'aqwam, aswab, ahya' and the like are one'. In Abu Ya'la's version al-A'mash does not say 'I heard Anas'. Al-Haythami calls Abu Ya'la's narrators men of the Sahih and al-Bazzar's trustworthy (Majma' 11613). Abd al-Haqq al-Ishbili questions al-Himmani's reliability (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

Anas is not explaining a hard word. He recites the verse with a different word, is told that is not how it is read, and defends himself by saying that the two words mean the same. In Abu Ya'la's version he widens it: 'aqwam, aswab, ahya' and the like are one'. If a Companion who heard the Qur'an from the Prophet could swap words in God's speech for synonyms, then at least this Companion did not hold the word-for-word view of the text that is claimed for the earliest generation today.

Al-Haythami does not treat the report as a stray comment. He places it after a run of reports on how the Prophet or a Companion recited particular words, among them 'rafarif' and 'basiqat' spelled with a different letter, and closes with: 'reports of this kind have already been given under their suras.'

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Anas was explaining the meaning: 'more upright' and 'more truthful' amount to the same thing, and a Companion may gloss a word by a synonym without changing the text. Others place such reports within the seven ahruf, the permitted variations of the early period. The chain is also open to question: al-A'mash's hearing from Anas is disputed and al-Himmani's reliability is doubted.

Why it fails

The gloss reading does not fit the exchange. The objection put to Anas was about recitation, 'it is read wa-aqwamu', and he did not say he was explaining the meaning; he said the words were interchangeable. The seven-ahruf answer concedes the point: it means the wording of a verse could vary by synonyms on a Companion's authority.

On the chain, al-Haythami calls al-Bazzar's narrators trustworthy and Abu Ya'la's men of the Sahih. The question al-Bazzar addresses is whether al-A'mash heard Anas directly (he cites this report to show that he did), not whether Anas said it; Abd al-Haqq's doubt is about al-Himmani.

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Coitus interruptus is useless: 'if the water were spilled on a rock, God would bring a child out of it' Science Allah's Character Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 7341
"If the water from which the child comes were thrown onto a rock, God would bring his child out of it, or: would bring a child out of it; and God will surely create every soul that He is to create."

What the hadith says

Thumama reports from Anas b. Malik that a man asked the Prophet about 'azl, withdrawal before ejaculation. The Prophet answered with the image of semen thrown onto a rock: God would still bring a child out of it, and God will create every soul He is to create. The 'or' is the transmitter's doubt about the exact wording. Al-Bazzar records it (7341) and says it is known from Anas only by this route. Al-Haythami says Ahmad and al-Bazzar both have it 'and both their chains are good' (hasan, Majma' 7573); al-Albani grades it hasan (through supporting reports, in al-Silsila al-Sahiha 1333), Ibn Hajar notes two supporting reports, and al-Arna'ut grades the chain of Ahmad's version weak (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The canonical answer on 'azl is in Muslim 1438a. Men who had taken 'excellent Arab women' captive at Banu al-Mustaliq wanted sex with them but also wanted their ransom, so they practised withdrawal, and asked. The Prophet said it did not matter, 'for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born'. The question was practical: how to avoid a pregnancy. The answer sets the method aside and puts the outcome in God's decree.

Al-Bazzar's version, graded good, makes that answer physical. Semen thrown on a stone would still produce a child if God willed it. It is meant as an image of God's power, not a claim that rocks conceive. But the image is chosen to tell a man that his precaution makes no difference. As guidance on contraception it says that where the semen goes does not decide whether a child results.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the hadith is about God's decree, not biology. The rock is hyperbole: nothing can stop a child God has decreed, which is the same point as the canonical Muslim 1438. The Prophet did not forbid 'azl; he told people not to think it gives them control over what God has written.

Why it fails

The hyperbole reading is fair, and this entry does not say the hadith teaches that stone can conceive. The difficulty is the use the image is put to. Asked a direct question about a method of avoiding pregnancy, the Prophet replies that the method is beside the point, and the picture he gives is meant to make the listener stop relying on it. A believer asking the same question today gets the same answer from a report al-Haythami and al-Albani grade good.

The canonical setting matters too. In Muslim 1438a the 'azl being asked about was practised on captive women whose ransom the men did not want to lose. The decree-based answer passes over that and addresses only whether a child might result.

Check it yourself

Satan has his own kohl and licking paste: one keeps you from prayer, the other loosens your tongue to evil Magic & Occult Strange / Obscure Ritual Absurdities Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 4583
"Satan has a kohl and a licking paste. When he puts his kohl on a person, it keeps him from prayer; when he makes him lick his paste, his tongue runs sharp with evil."

What the hadith says

Samura b. Jundub reports the Prophet saying that Satan has a kohl (eye powder) and a la'uq (a paste taken by licking). Applied to a person, the kohl distracts him from prayer; licked, the paste makes his tongue sharp with evil. Al-Bazzar gives it with two chains (4583-4584) and says the saying is known from the Prophet only through Samura and Anas, and from Qatada only through al-Hakam b. Abd al-Malik and Sa'id b. Bashir. Al-Haythami says the narrators of one chain are men of the Sahih except Sa'id b. Bashir, whom Shu'ba and others trusted and Ibn Ma'in and others weakened; elsewhere he calls the other chain's al-Hakam b. Abd al-Malik weak (Majma' 8357). Al-Albani grades it weak; Ibn Hajar says its chain has slight weakness but it has a supporting report (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The report explains two ordinary failings, drowsiness that keeps a man from prayer and a sharp tongue, as the effects of substances Satan applies to people. Kohl and licked pastes were everyday cosmetics and remedies, and here Satan has his own supply. The picture moves the cause of a lapse in prayer from the person to an outside agent working on his eyes and mouth.

It is not isolated. In the canonical collection a man who slept until morning without praying is explained the same way: 'Satan urinated in his ears' (Bukhari 1144).

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak (al-Albani) and is not relied on. Where it is quoted, it is read figuratively: the kohl stands for the heaviness that makes a person sleep through prayer, the paste for idle and harmful talk.

Why it fails

The weakness is real, and this entry does not claim more for the report than al-Bazzar's text. But the critics are not unanimous: al-Haythami found one chain of Sahih narrators apart from a man some trusted, and Ibn Hajar called the weakness slight with a supporting report.

The figurative reading also has to be applied to Bukhari 1144, where the agent and the bodily act are the same kind of thing. The tradition repeatedly describes Satan acting on the body with physical substances, and it is the readers who turn these into metaphors.

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In Paradise you look at a bird, want it, and it lands before you roasted Paradise Animals Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 2032
"You will look at a bird in Paradise and desire it, and it will come before you roasted."

What the hadith says

Abd Allah b. Mas'ud reports the Prophet saying that in Paradise a man looks at a bird, desires it, and it comes before him roasted. Al-Bazzar records it (2032) and says it is known only from Ibn Mas'ud and only by this route. He identifies the transmitter Humayd al-A'raj as a Kufan, Humayd b. Ata, not the Meccan Humayd who narrates from Mujahid. Al-Haythami: 'it contains Humayd b. Ata al-A'raj, who is weak' (Majma' 18734). Al-Albani grades it very weak, and Ibn Adi says Humayd's reports are not upright and are not corroborated (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an promises the people of Paradise 'the meat of fowl, from whatever they desire' (Q 56:21). This report fills in how: the bird is seen in Paradise, and it arrives cooked once it is wanted. Paradise is pictured as appetite answered on the spot, with the creatures in it serving as food the moment someone wants them.

It is a small example of how a short Qur'anic phrase gathered concrete detail in transmission, and of what a hadith master would preserve. Al-Bazzar's comment is about the rarity of the chain and the identity of Humayd, not the content.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is very weak (al-Albani) and that Ibn Adi and al-Haythami fault its narrator and adds nothing to belief: the Qur'an already promises the flesh of birds as the people of Paradise desire, and the details of how it is served are not known from any sound report.

Why it fails

That is largely right. The report is weak and this entry does not make it Muslim doctrine. The honest point is narrower: the Qur'anic promise is itself one of fowl meat on demand, and this report simply spells out what that means. The tradition rejected this report because of Humayd, not because its picture of Paradise was thought unworthy.

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God descends in the last three hours of the night: first to open 'the Book' no one else has seen, then to Eden, then to the lowest heaven Allah's Character Paradise Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 4079
"God descends in three hours that remain of the night. In the first hour He opens the Book which no one but He has seen, and God erases what He wills and confirms what He wills."

What the hadith says

Abu al-Darda' reports the Prophet saying that God descends in the last three hours of the night. In the first He opens 'the Book' (al-dhikr) that no one else has seen and erases and confirms what He wills. In the second He descends to the Garden of Eden, 'which no one but He has seen and which has not occurred to any human heart'; none of the children of Adam lives in it with Him except prophets, the truthful and martyrs, and He says, 'Blessed is whoever enters you.' In the third He descends to the lowest heaven and calls for those asking forgiveness until the dawn prayer. Al-Bazzar records it (4079), says it is known in this wording only by this route and that only al-Layth narrates from Ziyada b. Muhammad. Al-Haythami: Ziyada is weak (Majma' 18719). Al-Uqayli says no one corroborates Ziyada and quotes al-Bukhari calling him munkar al-hadith (his reports are objectionable) (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The nightly descent itself is canonical: God comes down to the lowest heaven in the last third of the night and asks who will call on Him (Bukhari 1145). Al-Bazzar's version turns it into a timetable with three stops. It has God opening a book each night to erase and confirm, words taken from Q 13:39, so that the record of what will be is revised nightly. It also places God in a garden where He 'lives' with an elite of humans.

Each of these is a statement about where God is and what He does at set hours. None of them is in the Qur'an's own description.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak and objectionable (Ziyada b. Muhammad; al-Bukhari via al-Uqayli; al-Haythami) and that only the canonical descent hadith is relied on. Erasing and confirming is Qur'anic (Q 13:39) and needs no weak report to support it.

Why it fails

On the report itself the answer is right, and this entry does not treat it as Muslim belief. But the line the critics drew is narrow. Most reject the three-stage elaboration because of one narrator, though Ibn Khuzayma included it in his Kitab al-Tawhid, a creed book whose preface claims sound chains for what it collects (dorar.net card). They accept the core claim that God descends each night, and the Qur'an supplies the erasing and confirming. What remains disputed is only how much of God's movement the tradition is prepared to describe in detail.

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Plants tell Solomon their names and uses; the carob says it grew 'to ruin this house', and he dies leaning on his staff Science Strange / Obscure Scripture Integrity Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 5060
"It said: 'The carob.' He said: 'What are you for?' It said: 'For the ruin of this house.'"

What the hadith says

In al-Bazzar's first chain Ibn Abbas reports from the Prophet that whenever Solomon stood to pray he saw a plant growing in front of him and asked it its name and its purpose. If it was for medicine, it was written down; if it was for planting, it was planted. One day a plant gave its name as the carob and said it was 'for the ruin of this house'. Solomon prayed: 'O God, hide my death from the jinn, so that mankind knows the jinn do not know the unseen.' He leaned on his staff and died while the jinn worked on, until a termite ate the staff over a year and he fell. 'The jinn thanked the termite and used to bring it water.' Al-Bazzar (5060-5061) adds that many narrate it from Ata b. al-Sa'ib as Ibn Abbas's own words and that only Ibrahim b. Tahman raised it to the Prophet. Al-Haythami: 'it contains Ata, who became confused; the rest are men of the Sahih' (Majma' 13799). Al-Hakim called a version sound in chain; al-Albani grades it weak as the Prophet's words; Ibn Kathir thought it more likely Ibn Abbas's own (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an says only that a creature of the earth ate Solomon's staff and that, when he fell, it became clear that the jinn did not know the unseen (Q 34:14). The report adds a folk story around it: plants announce their names and medical uses to a praying prophet, one plant announces that it exists to ruin the house, and the jinn reward the termite with water. In al-Bazzar's first chain all of this is credited to the Prophet.

The report also shows a Companion reading the verse differently. Al-Bazzar's text ends 'Ibn Abbas used to recite it thus', and in al-Haythami's copy the verse reads 'mankind realised that the jinn, had they known the unseen...', not the standard 'it became clear to the jinn'.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the story is not the Prophet's. Al-Bazzar himself notes that most transmitters give it as Ibn Abbas's words, Ibn Kathir thought the mawquf form more likely, and al-Albani grades the Prophet's version weak. A Companion's story-telling around a verse is not revelation.

Why it fails

That answer moves the story; it does not remove it. Even as Ibn Abbas's words, it shows a Companion filling a Qur'anic narrative with talking plants and grateful jinn and transmitting it with a chain that al-Haythami calls Sahih apart from Ata. The variant reading is also preserved in the same report. The tradition's own record of Ibn Abbas thus includes both the folk tale and a different wording of Q 34:14.

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'I saw Abd al-Rahman b. Awf entering Paradise crawling': a 700-camel caravan and a rejected report Paradise Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 6899
"I have seen Abd al-Rahman, and he enters Paradise crawling."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik says that a caravan of seven hundred camels laden with everything arrived for Abd al-Rahman b. Awf, and Medina marvelled. A'isha asked what it was and said: 'I heard the Messenger of God say: I have seen Abd al-Rahman, and he enters Paradise crawling.' When this reached him he asked her about it, then said: 'I call you to witness that it is in the path of God, with its saddles, its saddle-cloths and its loads.' Al-Bazzar records it (6899) and says only Umara b. Zadhan has it from Thabit. Al-Haythami, copying it (Kashf al-Astar 2586), says: 'This is munkar (objectionable); its defect is Umara b. Zadhan.' He quotes Ahmad ('he has objectionable reports'), Abu Hatim ('not used as proof') and al-Daraqutni, who weakened him. On the same page he gives another version, 'the first of the rich of my community to enter Paradise is Abd al-Rahman b. Awf ... he will enter it only crawling', and comments: 'No hadith about his entering crawling is sound.' Ibn al-Jawzi quotes Ahmad calling the report 'a lie' and al-Arna'ut grades the version in Ahmad's Musnad 'objectionable, false'. Ibn Hajar defends it through a supporting report with a strong chain, and al-Shawkani calls it strong through its many routes, not fabricated (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

Abd al-Rahman b. Awf is one of the ten men the Prophet named as being in Paradise (Tirmidhi 3747). This report makes his wealth the obstacle: he gets in, but on hands and knees, and on hearing it he gives away the whole caravan. The theme was not a one-off. Al-Haythami's page holds three versions: A'isha's report, an Anas report about 'the first of the rich', and Abd al-Rahman's own dream in which only the poor enter Paradise and he crawls in with them.

The report was rejected, but the circumstances are worth noting. Ahmad b. Hanbal is quoted calling it a lie, yet a version of it is in his Musnad (no. 24842 in al-Arna'ut's edition), and Ibn Hajar, the leading commentator on al-Bukhari, held that it has a supporting report with a strong chain; al-Shawkani called it strong through its many routes.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is false. Imam Ahmad called it a lie, al-Haythami calls it objectionable and says no report of the 'crawling' is sound, and al-Arna'ut grades it false. Abd al-Rahman's place in Paradise rests on the sound report of the ten (Tirmidhi 3747), not on this.

Why it fails

On the evidence the critics have the better case, and this entry does not claim the Prophet said it. What it shows is how persistent the story was: it was told as A'isha's report, as an Anas report and as Abd al-Rahman's own dream, and it reached the Musnads of Ahmad and al-Bazzar. Ahmad's Musnad still carries a report that Ahmad himself is quoted calling a lie.

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'O God, teach Mu'awiya the Book and reckoning, and shield him from the punishment' Prophetic Character Contradictions Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 4202
"O God, teach Mu'awiya the Book and reckoning, and shield him from the punishment."

What the hadith says

Al-Irbad b. Sariya reports the Prophet praying: 'O God, teach Mu'awiya the Book and reckoning (al-hisab), and shield him from the punishment.' In the same report al-Irbad finds the Prophet eating the pre-dawn meal and is invited to 'the blessed breakfast'. Al-Bazzar records it (4202) and says it is known from al-Irbad only by this route, that 'the hadith of al-Irbad has two defects', one being that hardly anyone narrated from al-Harith b. Ziyad, and that Yunus b. Sayf is acceptable. Al-Haythami: 'it contains al-Harith b. Ziyad; I found no one who declared him reliable', and only Yunus narrated from him (Majma' 15917). Ibn Hibban included it in his Sahih (7210), where al-Arna'ut calls the chain weak; al-Albani grades it good through supporting reports; Ibn al-Jawzi says it is not sound (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The prayer asks God to shield Mu'awiya from the punishment, and it is recorded for a man who later went to war against Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law. The report gives one side of that conflict the Prophet's own prayer for protection from punishment. Its collector found two defects in it, and al-Haythami could find no one who vouched for a key narrator.

It is still not a dead report. Al-Albani accepts it as good on the strength of supporting reports, and it sits beside the canonical prayer 'O God, make him a guide and rightly guided' (Tirmidhi 3842). Against this, al-'Ajluni says that on Mu'awiya's merits 'there is no sound hadith' (dorar.net cards).

The Muslim response

Sunni scholars who accept it, like al-Albani, read it as a virtue of a Companion and a scribe of revelation, for whom the Prophet prayed for knowledge of scripture and of accounts. A prayer for protection is not a claim that Mu'awiya was sinless, and his conflict with Ali is treated as an error of judgement between Companions.

Why it fails

The prayer-not-guarantee point is fair, and this entry does not say the report makes Mu'awiya sinless. The grading is the weak link. A chain its own collector flagged as defective, through a man al-Haythami found no one to vouch for (Ibn Hibban, who put the report in his Sahih, evidently did), is lifted to 'good' by supporting reports. Ibn al-Jawzi rejected it outright, and al-'Ajluni denies that any report of Mu'awiya's merits is sound. The prayer survives as a Sunni proof text only on the most generous of the available gradings.

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'At the end of time there will be a people called the Rafida ... kill them' Eschatology Apostasy & Blasphemy Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 2777)
"At the end of time there will be a people called the Rafida; they reject Islam and spit it out. So kill them."

What the hadith says

Ibn Abbas reports the Prophet saying: 'At the end of time there will be a people called the Rafida (the Rejecters); they reject Islam and spit it out. So kill them.' The report is known from al-Haythami's copy of al-Bazzar's extra reports (Kashf al-Astar 2777), where al-Bazzar says he knows it from Ibn Abbas only by this chain. Al-Bazzar's report from Ali (Musnad al-Bazzar 499) has only 'a people called the Rafida, who reject Islam', without the order. Al-Haythami files both under 'Chapter: whoever reviles the Companions of the Messenger of God'. In his Majma' the Ibn Abbas text reads 'fight them, for they are polytheists', and he says its narrators 'were declared reliable, some disputed'. On the same page he grades a third version, in which the Rafida are people 'who claim love of the Prophet's household', as having a good chain (isnaduhu hasan, Majma' 16433-16434). Al-Bayhaqi calls the report weak and all its routes weak, al-Albani grades it weak, and al-Dhahabi says one of its narrators is not used as proof and another is feeble (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The report gives a sect its name in the Prophet's mouth, explains the name with a play on words ('called the Rejecters, they reject Islam'), declares its members to have left Islam and orders that they be killed. One version calls them polytheists. Another describes them as people claiming love for the Prophet's family, which identifies the target plainly, and that is the version al-Haythami grades good.

Al-Haythami's chapter heading shows the use the report was put to: it is filed as a proof against people who revile the Companions. Al-Bayhaqi, while calling it weak, still included it in his Dala'il al-Nubuwwa, a book of proofs of prophethood.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Sunni critics themselves reject it. Al-Bayhaqi says all its routes are weak, al-Albani grades it weak, al-Uqayli and al-Dhahabi fault its narrators, and Ali's version goes through a weak transmitter. A weak report establishes no ruling, so there is no Sunni teaching that people called Rafida must be killed.

Why it fails

The critics' verdicts are real, and this entry does not claim the report is Sunni law. But the tradition did not simply discard it. It was copied by Abu Ya'la, al-Bazzar, al-Tabarani and al-Bayhaqi. Al-Haythami grades one form good and calls the narrators of another 'declared reliable', and he files the whole group under a heading that gives it a polemical purpose. A death order against a named sect, in the Prophet's voice, was kept in circulation by the very scholars who doubted its chains.

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'My Lord has killed your lord', meaning Chosroes Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 3647
"My Lord has killed your lord, meaning Chosroes."

What the hadith says

Abu Bakra reports that a man from Persia came to the Prophet, who said to him: 'My Lord has killed your lord', and the transmitter explains, 'meaning Chosroes'. Afterwards the Prophet was told that Chosroes' daughter had been made his successor, and he said: 'A people ruled by a woman will not prosper.' Al-Bazzar gives it with two chains (3647-3648) and notes that 'this saying is narrated from the Prophet by more than one route', but that he knows no one who narrates it from Abu Bakra by this one. Al-Arna'ut grades the same report in Ahmad's Musnad sound (20438), al-Wadi'i grades it sound (al-Sahih al-Musnad 1168), and al-Albani grades sound a report in which the Prophet tells Chosroes' envoys 'my Lord has killed his lord tonight' (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 1429) (dorar.net cards). The woman-ruler saying is canonical (Bukhari 4425); the words 'my Lord has killed your lord' are not in the six books.

Why this is a problem

The report puts God and the Persian king side by side as rival lords, using the same word, rabb, for both, and has the Prophet announce the king's death to a Persian as his God's act. The word can mean a master or ruler, and the report itself glosses it 'meaning Chosroes'. The point is not that the Persian worshipped his king. It is that a killing at a foreign court is presented as a victory of the Prophet's Lord over the Persian's.

The report also shows the setting of the canonical saying about women rulers. In al-Bazzar's version, as in Bukhari 4425, 'a people ruled by a woman will not prosper' is the Prophet's comment on the Persian succession after the king's death, not a ruling given on its own.

The Muslim response

Muslims read the report as a fulfilled prophecy: the Prophet told the Persian that Chosroes had died before the news arrived. Rabb here means master or king, as the gloss 'meaning Chosroes' shows. Al-Bazzar notes that the saying is reported by more than one route.

Why it fails

The 'master' reading is right, and this entry translates it 'your lord' in lower case for that reason. The report gives no detail by which the prophecy could be checked, and even a chain graded sound shows what was transmitted, not that the prediction was checked against events. What it shows is that the tradition remembered the woman-ruler saying as part of a story about God striking down a foreign king, the setting al-Bazzar gives it; Bukhari 4425 keeps the Persian succession but not the killing.

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Iblis is the first to be clothed in a garment of fire, dragging it behind him with his offspring Hell Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 7416
"The first to be clothed, I reckon he said: on the Day of Resurrection, with a garment of fire is Iblis. He puts it on his eyebrows and drags it behind him."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik reports the Prophet saying that the first to be clothed with a garment of fire is Iblis. The transmitter is unsure of the wording ('I reckon he said: on the Day of Resurrection'; 'I reckon he said: and his offspring follow him'). Iblis puts the garment on his eyebrows and drags it behind him until he stands at the Fire and cries 'O my ruin!', his offspring cry 'O their ruin!', and they are told: 'Do not cry this day for one ruin, but cry for many' (Q 25:14). Al-Bazzar records it (7416) and says only Anas has it and only Hammad b. Salama from Ali b. Zayd. Al-Haythami says Ahmad and al-Bazzar have it and their narrators are men of the Sahih 'except Ali b. Zayd, who was declared reliable' (Majma' 18611). Ali b. Zayd b. Jud'an is widely regarded as weak; Abd al-Haqq al-Ishbili quotes al-Bukhari's criticism of him, al-Albani grades the report weak and al-Arna'ut grades the chains in Ahmad's Musnad weak, while al-Suyuti calls its chain sound (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

The report gives the unseen a level of physical detail the Qur'an does not: a garment of fire draped from the eyebrows, a procession of Satan's descendants, a scripted exchange at the edge of the Fire. The Qur'an mentions Iblis's 'descendants' (Q 18:50) and 'garments of fire' cut for those who disbelieved (Q 22:19). It does not join them into a scene.

The verse it quotes belongs elsewhere. In the Qur'an, 'do not cry this day for one ruin' is said to people thrown into a narrow place in Hell, 'those who deny the Hour' (Q 25:11-14). The report applies it to Iblis and his offspring, and the transmitter is not even sure that it happens on the Day of Resurrection.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report describes the unseen, which is known only through revelation, and that its chain is close to sound: al-Haythami calls every narrator a man of the Sahih except Ali b. Zayd, who was declared reliable. Where Ali b. Zayd is judged weak, the report is simply not relied on.

Why it fails

Both answers cannot be held at full strength. If the chain is acceptable, as al-Haythami presents it, the tradition affirms a detailed picture of Hell built from Qur'anic phrases that, in the Qur'an, describe other people. If Ali b. Zayd is weak, as he is widely regarded, the scene is a transmitter's elaboration that a Musnad preserved and al-Haythami presented as nearly Sahih. Either way, the scene is not in the Qur'an.

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'The Dajjal has eaten food and walked in the markets' Eschatology Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 3574
"The Dajjal has eaten food and walked in the markets."

What the hadith says

Imran b. Husayn reports the Prophet saying: 'The Dajjal has eaten food and walked in the markets.' The tense is past and emphatic: the Antichrist was already a living man going about among people. Al-Bazzar records it (3574) and says no one narrates it by a better route, but the chain is disputed. Through Ali b. Zayd it is given from Imran, from Abd Allah b. Mughaffal, or from al-Hasan with no Companion named. Al-Haythami, on Ahmad's version, says its chain contains Ali b. Zayd 'and his hadith is hasan', and al-Tabarani's an unknown narrator (dorar.net cards). Al-Albani grades it weak and al-Arna'ut grades the chain of Ahmad's version weak, while al-Suyuti calls it good; Ahmad himself put the confusion over its Companion down to Ibn Uyayna.

Why this is a problem

'Eats food and walks in the markets' is the Qur'an's own description of messengers: the unbelievers mock 'this messenger that eats food and walks in the markets' (Q 25:7), and God answers that every messenger before him 'ate food and walked in the markets' (Q 25:20). The report uses the same words to say the Dajjal was an ordinary man alive in the Prophet's day.

The canonical collections carry the same idea. Jabir swore that Ibn Sayyad was the Dajjal, saying he had heard Umar swear it in the Prophet's presence without objection (Bukhari 7355). A man who ate and walked the markets of seventh-century Arabia has not appeared since. The prophecy either stretches his life across centuries or was simply wrong about him.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is disputed, and that the Dajjal's existence in the Prophet's time is accepted from other reports. He is alive and bound until his appointed emergence, and the time of that is known only to God. On this reading the report simply confirms that he was already in the world.

Why it fails

That answer accepts the premise: a figure who was a living man in the seventh century is still alive, centuries later, waiting to emerge. This report's chain is uncertain, but al-Haythami says the doubtful narrator's hadith is hasan (al-Albani and al-Arna'ut grade it weak), and the canonical Bukhari 7355 records Umar swearing, with the Prophet present and not objecting, that a contemporary, Ibn Sayyad, was the Dajjal. The difficulty does not depend on al-Bazzar's chain.

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Before he died the Prophet devoted himself to worship and withdrew from women 'until he became like a dried-out waterskin' Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 3840
"The Prophet devoted himself to worship before he died, and kept away from women until he became like a worn waterskin."

What the hadith says

Safina, the Prophet's freedman, reports through his son and grandson that before he died the Prophet devoted himself to worship and kept away from women until he became like a shann, a worn, dried-out leather waterskin: an image of a wasted body. That is the whole report. Al-Bazzar records it (3840) without comment. Al-Haythami says he found no one who mentions Safina's grandson Muhammad or his father, and that the chain contains Muhammad b. al-Hajjaj (Majma' 3630), of whom Ibn Ma'in said 'not trustworthy' (al-Ayni, dorar.net card). A longer version ('two months before he died ... like a worn-out saddle-cloth') is listed by Ibn al-Jawzi among fabrications as not sound and graded munkar by al-Albani (same search).

Why this is a problem

The canonical portrait of the Prophet's married life is the opposite. Anas says he 'used to visit all his wives in a round, during the day and night, and they were eleven in number', and that 'we used to say that he was given the strength of thirty' (Bukhari 268). Safina's report gives a different ending: a man who turned from his wives to devotion and wasted away.

Both pictures were transmitted under Companion names. Which details of the Prophet's private life a narrator chose to report, and in which direction, depended on what he thought was admirable.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report has two unknown links and a narrator Ibn Ma'in called untrustworthy, so it is not relied on. Even taken at face value it describes a time of devotion near the end of life, not a renunciation of marriage.

Why it fails

That is right on the chain, and this entry does not claim the Prophet gave up marriage; the report says only that he kept away from women before he died. Its interest is as a counter-portrait: Safina's own descendants passed down a picture of ascetic withdrawal that the canonical record of the Prophet's marriages does not support.

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'The prophets are alive, praying in their graves' Prophetic Character Eschatology Strange / Obscure Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 6391
"The prophets are alive, praying in their graves."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik reports the Prophet saying: 'The prophets are alive, praying in their graves.' Al-Bazzar records it (6391) and says no one corroborates al-Hasan b. Qutayba's transmission from Hammad; what is known from Anas is 'I saw Moses praying in his grave'. Abu Ya'la has the same saying from Anas through Thabit al-Bunani (Musnad Abu Ya'la 3425), and his editor Husayn Salim Asad grades that chain sound (isnaduhu sahih). Al-Haythami says Abu Ya'la's narrators are trustworthy (Majma' 13812), and al-Albani grades the saying sound, its chain 'strong'. Al-Dhahabi calls al-Hasan b. Qutayba 'ruined', and in his entry on al-Hajjaj al-Aswad, the narrator of Abu Ya'la's route, he calls the report objectionable (munkar) (dorar.net cards). Al-Bayhaqi wrote a treatise on the subject, Hayat al-Anbiya'.

Why this is a problem

The canonical text speaks of one prophet on one night: on the Night Journey the Prophet passed Moses 'saying his prayer in his grave' (Muslim 2375a). This report, graded sound through Abu Ya'la's route, makes it a rule for all prophets. They are alive and praying in their graves now.

That sits badly with how the Prophet's own death was handled. When Umar insisted the Prophet was not dead, Abu Bakr told the people: 'Whoever worshipped Muhammad, Muhammad is dead', and recited 'Indeed, you are to die, and indeed, they are to die' (Q 39:30; Bukhari 3668). If the prophets are alive in their graves, the Prophet whom Abu Bakr declared dead was, once buried, alive and praying in his.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the life meant is the life of the barzakh, the state between death and resurrection. It is real but unlike worldly life, and it does not cancel physical death. Al-Bayhaqi devoted a treatise to it, the saying is graded sound, and like other matters of the unseen it is accepted on the strength of the report.

Why it fails

The barzakh answer keeps the word 'alive' only by emptying it: a life that coexists with death, burial and Abu Bakr's 'Muhammad is dead' is not what 'the prophets are alive' would mean to anyone hearing it. Nothing in the text says anything about the prophets hearing requests, and this entry does not claim it does. But a sound report saying that every prophet is alive and praying in his tomb gives the dead prophets an activity that Q 39:30 and Abu Bakr's sermon do not allow for, and later scholars had to reconcile the two.

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An angel screens the Prophet from Abu Lahab's wife, and Abu Bakr swears he has not satirised her Prophetic Character Moral Problems Strange / Obscure Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar 15
"'Abu Bakr, has your companion satirised us?' Abu Bakr said: 'No, by the Lord of this building, he does not speak poetry or utter it.' ... 'No, an angel kept screening me until she turned away.'"

What the hadith says

Ibn Abbas says that when 'May the hands of Abu Lahab be ruined' (Q 111) came down, Abu Lahab's wife came while the Prophet sat with Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr suggested he move aside so she would not hurt him; the Prophet said, 'Something will be put between me and her.' She stood over Abu Bakr and asked, 'Abu Bakr, has your companion satirised us?' He answered: 'No, by the Lord of this building, he does not speak poetry or utter it.' She said, 'You are believed', and left. Asked whether she had seen him, the Prophet said: 'No, an angel kept screening me until she turned away.' Al-Bazzar records it (15) and calls it 'a good chain' (hasan al-isnad). He files it among Abu Bakr's own reports because of Abu Bakr's sworn statement about the Prophet. Al-Haythami adds that it contains Ata b. al-Sa'ib, 'who became confused' (Majma' 11529); Ibn Hajar grades the chain good (dorar.net card).

Why this is a problem

The sura had just condemned her by name: 'And his wife, the carrier of firewood; around her neck is a rope of twisted fibre' (Q 111:4-5). Her question was whether Muhammad had attacked her family. Abu Bakr swore 'by the Lord of this building' to something else, that Muhammad does not compose poetry. That is true in the sense that the Qur'an is not poetry, but it left her believing she had not been attacked. She left saying 'you are believed'. The report, graded good by al-Bazzar and Ibn Hajar, presents an oath by God that evades her question, and no one in it objects.

It also needs a miracle to work: an angel hides the Prophet from a woman standing beside him, so that the question falls on Abu Bakr instead.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Abu Bakr spoke the truth. Hija' (satire) was a genre of poetry, the Qur'an is not poetry ('We did not give him knowledge of poetry', Q 36:69), and the sura is God's word, not the Prophet's composition. The screening angel is a miracle of protection, and the chain is graded good by Ibn Hajar.

Why it fails

The literal defence is the problem, not the answer. Abu Bakr did not say 'this is God's word, not his'; he gave a reply true in its words and false in the impression it left, and she left believing she had been spared. An oath by God used that way is evasion, even if it is not a plain lie. The report's own collector singled out the oath as the reason for filing it, and none of the graders cited here comments on the oath.

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'The Sealer hangs from a leg of the Throne': God sends it to seal the sinner's heart so he understands nothing Allah's Character Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 5981
"The Sealer hangs from a leg of the Throne. When kinship complains, sins are committed and boldness is shown [against God], God sends the Sealer, it seals his heart, and he understands nothing after that."

What the hadith says

Ibn Umar, in a report raised to the Prophet, says that 'the Sealer' (al-tabi') hangs from a leg of God's Throne. When kinship is wronged, sins are committed and people grow bold [against God], God sends the Sealer, which seals the sinner's heart so that he understands nothing afterwards. Al-Bazzar records it (5981) and says only Sulayman b. Muslim has it from al-Taymi from Nafi'. Al-Haythami: 'it contains Sulayman b. Muslim al-Khashshab, who is very weak' (Majma' 12151). Al-Albani and al-Dhahabi call it fabricated (mawdu'), and Ibn Hibban says Sulayman may be narrated from only to examine his reports (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an says God 'has set a seal upon their hearts' (Q 2:7). This report turns the act into an object and a mechanism: a sealing device hangs on the Throne, which has legs, and God dispatches it when sins pile up. The result is that the sinner 'understands nothing after that'. In the report the sealing is sent by God and ends the sinner's understanding altogether.

It is a fabrication by the critics' own verdict, but it was transmitted under the Prophet's name with a chain through Nafi' and Ibn Umar, and al-Bazzar describes its sole transmitter as 'a well-known Basran'.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is fabricated (al-Albani, al-Dhahabi) or very weak (al-Haythami) and is not used. The sealing of hearts is affirmed in the Qur'an (Q 2:7), and Muslim theology takes it as God's response to people's own persistent sin, not an arbitrary act.

Why it fails

On the report the answer is right, and this entry does not make the Sealer a Muslim belief. What survives the rejection is the doctrine the report illustrates. Q 2:7 itself says God 'has set a seal upon their hearts', and the report only gives that a picture. The tradition rejected the picture because of Sulayman b. Muslim; the idea of a divinely sealed heart that can no longer understand is Qur'anic.

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God to Moses: 'I spoke to you with the power of ten thousand tongues, and I have the power of all tongues' Allah's Character Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 2353)
"O Moses, I spoke to you with the power of ten thousand tongues, and I have the power of all tongues and stronger than that."

What the hadith says

Jabir b. Abd Allah reports the Prophet saying that when God spoke to Moses on the day of Sinai, He spoke with a different speech from the one He used when He first called him. Moses asked, 'Lord, is this Your speech with which You spoke to me?' God said: 'O Moses, I spoke to you with the power of ten thousand tongues, and I have the power of all tongues and stronger than that.' Back among the Israelites, asked to describe the speech of the Merciful, Moses said they could not bear it and likened it to the sound of thunderbolts: 'that is close to it, but it is not it.' The report is known from al-Haythami's copy of al-Bazzar's extra reports (Kashf al-Astar 2353), where al-Bazzar says it is known in this wording only by this route and points back to al-Fadl b. Isa al-Raqashi, 'meaning that he is weak'. Al-Haythami: al-Fadl is weak (Majma' 13782). Ibn al-Jawzi says it is not sound, Ibn Kathir that its chain is weak; al-Suyuti thought calling it fabricated went too far (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an says only that 'God spoke to Moses directly' (Q 4:164). The report measures that speech by tongues, ten thousand of them, says God has the power of all tongues and more, and has God use a different speech on Sinai from the one He used at the first call. God's speech is described as a matter of volume and capacity, and of more than one kind, and the only comparison Moses can find for it is thunder.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak (al-Haythami, Ibn Kathir) and that Ibn al-Jawzi rejected it. God's speaking to Moses is affirmed by the Qur'an (Q 4:164) without these details, and a weak narration cannot settle anything about God's attributes.

Why it fails

That is right, and this entry does not claim the report is Muslim doctrine. The honest point is what was transmitted and defended. Al-Bazzar recorded it knowing his narrator was weak. Al-Suyuti objected to calling it fabricated because al-Fadl was not accused of lying. So a picture of God's speech counted in tongues stayed in circulation as a weak but not invented report.

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A Jew asks the names of the eleven stars that bowed to Joseph; the Prophet lists them Scripture Integrity Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 2220)
"'Muhammad, tell me the names of the stars that Joseph saw bowing to him.' He said: 'Al-Hirthan, Tariq, al-Dhayyal, Qabis ...'"

What the hadith says

Jabir b. Abd Allah says a Jew came to the Prophet and asked: 'Muhammad, tell me the names of the stars that Joseph saw bowing to him.' The Prophet named eleven, in this edition's spelling: al-Hirthan, Tariq, al-Dhayyal, Qabis, al-Nath, al-Saruh, Dhu al-Kanafayn, Dhu al-Fargh, al-Faliq, Waththab and al-Amudan. Joseph saw them bowing to him and told his father, who said: 'This is a scattered matter; perhaps God will gather it afterwards.' The report is known from al-Haythami's copy of al-Bazzar's extra reports (Kashf al-Astar 2220), filed under Surat Yusuf. Al-Bazzar says it is known from the Prophet only by this chain and that al-Hakam b. Zuhayr 'is not strong', though a group narrated from him. Al-Haythami is blunter: al-Hakam is matruk, abandoned (Majma' 11084). The spellings of several names differ between the two books. Al-Hakim gives a version in which the Prophet stays silent until Gabriel brings the answer, and calls it sound on Muslim's condition (al-Mustadrak 8409); al-Uqayli calls the report munkar, al-Dhahabi lists it among fabrications and Ibn al-Qaysarani calls al-Hakam a liar (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an says only that Joseph saw 'eleven stars and the sun and the moon' prostrating to him (Q 12:4). The report has a Jewish questioner test the Prophet on a detail the Qur'an leaves out, and the Prophet answers at once with a list of names. The story is told as a proof of prophecy: the questioner asks for hidden knowledge, and the Prophet has it.

What it proves is how such knowledge was supplied. The names come through a transmitter his own collector called weak and al-Haythami called abandoned, and the spellings differ between al-Haythami's two books. Nothing in the report shows where the list came from.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is not the Prophet's: its narrator al-Hakam b. Zuhayr is abandoned (al-Haythami) and al-Bazzar himself calls him weak. The Qur'an does not name the stars, and nothing in Muslim belief depends on their names.

Why it fails

That is right, and this entry does not say Muslims must believe the list. The point is that al-Bazzar, knowing his narrator was weak, still recorded an exchange in which the Prophet answers a Jew's test with eleven names, and al-Haythami filed it under the commentary on Surat Yusuf. That is one way detail on Qur'anic stories reached the collections.

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'Do not revile Waraqa: I saw that he has a garden, or two gardens' Paradise Contradictions Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 2750)
"Do not revile Waraqa, for I have seen that he has a garden, or two gardens."

What the hadith says

A'isha reports the Prophet saying: 'Do not revile Waraqa, for I have seen that he has a garden, or two gardens.' A second version, from Urwa with no Companion named, explains that a man quarrelling with Waraqa's brother insulted Waraqa to anger him, and the Prophet said, 'Did you know that I have seen that Waraqa has a garden, or two gardens?' and forbade reviling him. Both are known from al-Haythami's copy of al-Bazzar's extra reports, under 'The merits of Waraqa' (Kashf al-Astar 2750-2751). Al-Haythami says the narrators of both the connected and the mursal versions are men of the Sahih (Majma' 16175). Al-Hakim and al-Albani grade it sound on the conditions of al-Bukhari and Muslim. Ibn Kathir calls the chain good but thinks the mursal form more likely, and al-Daraqutni notes that others narrate it mursal (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

Bukhari's own account of the first revelation says Waraqa 'during the pre-Islamic period became a Christian and used to write the writing with Hebrew letters', copying from the Gospel. He recognised the angel, said he wished he could live to support Muhammad, 'but after a few days Waraqa died' (Bukhari 3). In this report, graded sound by al-Hakim and al-Albani, he has one or two gardens in Paradise.

Others fare differently. Asked 'where is my father?', the Prophet said 'in the Fire', then called the man back: 'my father and your father are in the Fire' (Muslim 203). And the Qur'an says that whoever desires a religion other than Islam, 'never will it be accepted from him' (Q 3:85).

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Waraqa was a believer. He affirmed that Muhammad's visitor was the angel sent to Moses and promised to support him, so he died accepting his prophethood. In Tirmidhi 2288 Khadija says 'he believed in you, but he died before you appeared', and the Prophet saw him in white garments. Before the full message was preached, that acceptance was all that could be asked of him.

Why it fails

That answer makes a few sentences of recognition, spoken by a man Bukhari calls a Christian, enough for Paradise, while in Muslim 203 the Prophet tells a man: 'my father and your father are in the Fire'. The difference rests on Waraqa's brief exchange with the Prophet, which al-Bazzar's report does not even mention: it gives only the gardens and the ban on reviling him. And the Tirmidhi report cited in support is one Tirmidhi himself calls gharib, noting that one of its narrators is not strong.

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God will raise 70,000 from Homs in Syria with no reckoning, 'between the olive trees and the wall' Paradise Eschatology Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 317
"God will surely raise from a city in Syria called Homs seventy thousand who will have no reckoning, between the olive trees, the wall and the red ground."

What the hadith says

Ibn Abd Kalal says he heard Umar b. al-Khattab report the Prophet saying that God will raise seventy thousand people from Homs, a city in Syria, who will face no reckoning, from the ground 'between the olive trees, the wall and the red soft earth' (al-barath al-ahmar). Al-Bazzar records it (317) and says it is known from the Prophet only by this route and that 'Ibn Abd Kalal is not known for transmission'; al-Haythami copies it (Kashf al-Astar 3537). On Ahmad's version al-Haythami says the chain has Abu Bakr b. Abi Maryam, who is weak (Majma' 16664). Al-Albani grades it weak; al-Suyuti, against the others, marked it sound (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The canonical promise is that seventy thousand of the whole Muslim community will enter Paradise without reckoning (Bukhari 6541). This report gives the same number to one Syrian town and fixes the spot down to the olive groves and the wall. Homs came under Muslim rule only in AD 637, after the Prophet's death. A report of special merit for a city the Prophet's community did not yet hold, resting on a man al-Bazzar calls unknown as a transmitter, looks like a local claim given the Prophet's name.

Even so, al-Suyuti marked it sound in his al-Jami' al-Saghir.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak: al-Bazzar himself says its key transmitter is unknown, al-Haythami faults Abu Bakr b. Abi Maryam and al-Albani grades it weak. Reports praising particular cities are a known category that critics treat with suspicion, and this one is not relied on.

Why it fails

That is fair, and this entry does not claim Muslims believe it. The honest point is the one the Muslim answer concedes. Local-merit reports with the Prophet's name on them were produced and circulated, they reached al-Bazzar's Musnad and Ahmad's, and al-Suyuti let this one through as sound.

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When 'give the kinsman his due' came down, the Prophet called Fatima and gave her Fadak Prophetic Character Contradictions Governance Moderate Musnad al-Bazzar (Kashf al-Astar 2223)
"When this verse came down, 'And give the kinsman his due', the Messenger of God called Fatima and gave her Fadak."

What the hadith says

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri says that when Q 17:26, 'And give the relative his right', was revealed, the Prophet called his daughter Fatima and gave her Fadak, the estate whose ownership was later disputed. The report is known from al-Haythami's copy of al-Bazzar's extra reports (Kashf al-Astar 2223), filed under Surat al-Isra'. Al-Bazzar says only Abu Sa'id has it and only Fudayl b. Marzuq from Atiyya. Al-Haythami, on al-Tabarani's version, says Atiyya al-Awfi is 'weak, abandoned' (Majma' 11125). Al-Dhahabi calls it false (batil), Ibn Kathir 'very objectionable', al-Albani fabricated (mawdu'), and Ibn Hajar faults two of al-Bazzar's transmitters (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

If the report is true, Fadak was Fatima's by gift during the Prophet's life, and taking it from her was taking her property. The canonical account has the opposite: after the Prophet's death Fatima asked Abu Bakr for her inheritance, including Fadak; he refused, citing 'our property will not be inherited', and she 'got angry and stopped speaking to Abu Bakr' until she died six months later (Bukhari 3092). The two give incompatible grounds for her claim. The gift report serves as the proof text for Fatima's side of that dispute, and Sunni critics reject it as false.

Ibn Kathir gives the decisive objection, and it is about dating, not the chain. 'This hadith is problematic even if its chain were sound, because the verse is Meccan, and Fadak was conquered only with Khaybar in the year seven of the Hijra. How can this fit with that?' (Tafsir Ibn Kathir 5/69). On the tradition's own chronology, the verse came years before the estate came into the Prophet's hands.

The Muslim response

Sunni scholars reject the report as false (al-Dhahabi), fabricated (al-Albani) and very objectionable (Ibn Kathir), and follow Bukhari 3092: prophets leave no inheritance, and Abu Bakr acted on the Prophet's own instruction. A rejected report cannot be used against Abu Bakr.

Why it fails

For the Sunni position the answer holds: the gift report is weak and anachronistic, as Ibn Kathir showed. The problem is what remains. Bukhari 3092 is the sound report, and it records the Prophet's daughter angry with the first caliph until her death over property she claimed. The gift report shows that the dispute was fought with reports attributed to the Prophet. Ibn Kathir's objection also shows how such reports can be caught: by the tradition's own dating of the verse and of the conquest.

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Adam was sent out of Paradise with its fruits: 'these fruits of yours are from the fruits of Paradise, except that these spoil' Science Strange / Obscure Paradise Basic Musnad al-Bazzar 3029
"When Adam was sent out of Paradise, he was provisioned with the fruits of Paradise and taught the craft of everything. So these fruits of yours are from the fruits of Paradise, except that these change and those do not change."

What the hadith says

Abu Musa al-Ash'ari, in a version raised to the Prophet, says that when Adam was sent out of Paradise he was given its fruits as provisions and taught 'the craft of everything', so 'these fruits of yours are from the fruits of Paradise, except that these change and those do not'. Al-Bazzar records it (3029-3030) and says that several transmitters give it as Abu Musa's own words (mawquf) and that he knows no one but Rib'i b. Ulayya who raised it to the Prophet. Al-Albani agrees: weak as the Prophet's words, sound as Abu Musa's. Al-Haythami calls its narrators trustworthy, and al-Hakim calls the chain of Abu Musa's statement sound (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

In its sound form this is a Companion's claim, and the entry treats it as such. Abu Musa explains the world's fruit by Paradise: Adam carried its fruits out of the Garden as provisions, so the fruit people eat is the fruit of Paradise, the only difference being that earthly fruit spoils. He adds that Adam was taught the craft of everything, so human skills too come from Adam's training.

It is an origin story for the world's fruit and for crafts, given by a Companion and accepted as authentically his by al-Albani and al-Hakim, and it was raised to the Prophet in one line of transmission.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that it is Abu Musa's statement, not the Prophet's: al-Bazzar notes that only Rib'i raised it, and al-Albani grades the Prophet's version weak. A Companion's view about the origin of fruit is not revelation and carries no doctrinal weight.

Why it fails

That is right about attribution, and this entry does not credit the saying to the Prophet. But a Companion speaking about events no one witnessed, such as what Adam carried out of Paradise, had to have it from somewhere. Either it is Abu Musa's own speculation, preserved and graded sound as a Companion's teaching, or it reflects something he believed came from the Prophet, or lore he took from others. Either way the tradition kept, as authentic, a story that ties the earth's fruit to Paradise.

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