"Umar saw a slave-woman of ours with her head covered; he struck her and said: Do not imitate free women."
What the hadith says
This is Umar's act as reported by the Companion Anas b. Malik, not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it in his chapter on a slave-woman praying without a head-covering, through Shu'ba from Qatada from Anas; al-Shathri grades it sahih, and it is also in Abd al-Razzaq (5064). A second version through al-Zuhri is graded sahih too. A longer version through al-Mukhtar b. Fulful has Umar ask a slave-woman wearing a cloak over her head, "Have you been freed?" She says no. "Then why the jilbab? Take it off your head. The jilbab is only for the free women of the believers." She hesitated, and he went at her with his whip and struck her on the head until she threw it off. al-Albani calls this chain sound on Muslim's conditions, and al-Bayhaqi says the reports from Umar on the subject are sound.
Why this is a problem
Q 33:59 tells the Prophet's wives, daughters and "the women of the believers" to draw their cloaks over themselves, "so that they will be recognised and not harmed". The second caliph read this as a badge of rank: the jilbab was for free women, and a slave-woman who wore it was beaten until she took it off. The covering that is presented today as a matter of modesty and dignity was, in his hands, a mark of status that the lower class was forbidden to claim.
The beaten woman did nothing immodest. She covered herself. She was punished for looking like a free woman, by a caliph whose rulings Sunni jurists cite as precedent, in reports graded sound by both medieval and modern critics.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that a slave-woman's 'awra was legally lighter because of her work, and that Umar was preventing confusion between free and slave women, which is the purpose stated in Q 33:59 ("so that they will be recognised"). The concession lapsed where there was a risk of temptation (IslamQA 198645; SeekersGuidance).
Why it fails
The appeal to Q 33:59 grants the point: if the cloak exists so that free women are recognised and left alone, then slave-women were left recognisable as the ones who were not protected. The same IslamQA answer adds that slave-women need not cover partly because "people do not usually find them attractive", a status judgement, not a moral one.
Nothing in the response addresses the whip. A woman who chose to cover more, not less, was struck on the head by the caliph. No modesty rule needs that; it makes sense only as enforcing a social hierarchy.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 6379, ed. al-Shathri, vol. 4 pp. 353-354
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 6382, ed. al-Shathri, vol. 4 p. 354 (al-Zuhri < Anas)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 6383, ed. al-Shathri, vol. 4 pp. 354-355 (al-Mukhtar b. Fulful < Anas)
- Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq 5064, ed. al-A'zami, vol. 3 p. 136
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri: sahih (6379, 6382, 6383)
- Grading: al-Albani, Irwa' al-Ghalil 1796 (vol. 6 p. 204): al-Zuhri chain: sound if al-Zuhri heard it from Anas; al-Mukhtar b. Fulful chain: sanad sahih 'ala shart Muslim (sound on Muslim's conditions)
- Grading: al-Bayhaqi: wa-l-athar 'an Umar b. al-Khattab fi dhalika sahiha (the reports from Umar on this are sound)
"The highest building in the town is sought out and he is thrown from it head-first, then stones are sent after him."
What the hadith says
This is the ruling of the Companion Ibn Abbas, not a saying of the Prophet. Abu Nadra reports that Ibn Abbas was asked, "What is the prescribed punishment (hadd) of the luti [the man who commits the act of Lot's people]?" and gave the answer above. Ibn Abi Shayba records it in a chapter titled "The luti: his punishment is like the adulterer's", and its editor al-Shathri grades it sahih. al-Bayhaqi has it in al-Sunan al-Kubra (17024) and in Shu'ab al-Iman (5004), where the editor says its narrators are trustworthy. The death penalty itself has a canonical basis: Ibn Abbas also narrates from the Prophet, "If you find anyone doing as Lot's people did, kill the one who does it and the one to whom it is done" (Abu Dawud 4462). What this report adds is the method.
Why this is a problem
The method is not an arbitrary cruelty. It copies the destruction of Lot's people as Muslims read it in the Qur'an: lifted up, overturned and pelted with stones. IslamQA explains that Ibn Abbas "derived this hadd punishment from the punishment that Allah sent upon" them. A Companion, the narrator of the Prophetic command to kill, turned a story of divine judgement into a procedure for human executioners.
It remains a living source. The chain is graded sound, it stands in major collections of reports (Ibn Abi Shayba, al-Bayhaqi), and the IslamQA answer lists it without criticism among the Companions' views on how a homosexual should be killed.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that this is one Companion's personal reasoning (ijtihad), not a command of the Prophet, and the jurists did not all follow it. The footnote in the Shu'ab quotes al-Baghawi: some treated the act like adultery (stoning if married, a hundred lashes otherwise), others stoning in all cases, and al-Shafi'i also held that both parties are killed. Muslim reformists argue that the Qur'an sets no worldly punishment for it at all.
Why it fails
The list of opinions the response cites contains no option that leaves the man alone. The choice is between being thrown and stoned, stoned, burned, killed, or flogged a hundred lashes. The disagreement is about technique, and IslamQA states that "the Companions unanimously agreed on the execution of homosexuals".
Calling it "one Companion's reasoning" does not reduce its weight. Ibn Abbas is the most celebrated interpreter of the Qur'an among the Companions and the narrator of the Prophetic command to kill. His explanation of how to carry it out is graded sound and is still cited. The reformist reading may be sincere, but it has to set aside both the canonical hadith and this ruling.
Check it yourself
"So [Hafsa] gave the order to Abd al-Rahman b. Zayd, and he killed her ... It seems Uthman objected only because she was killed without his permission."
What the hadith says
This is a report about Hafsa, daughter of Umar and widow of the Prophet, told by her brother Ibn Umar through Nafi'. It is not a saying of the Prophet. A slave-woman of Hafsa's bewitched her; they found the objects of her sorcery and she confessed. Hafsa had Abd al-Rahman b. Zayd kill her. The caliph Uthman heard of it and objected strongly; Ibn Umar went to him and told him that she had bewitched Hafsa, confessed, and her sorcery had been found, "and it seems Uthman objected only because she was killed without his permission". Ibn Abi Shayba records it in a chapter titled "Blood on which the rulers judge" and again under punishments (30920); al-Shathri grades both sahih. In Abd al-Razzaq Ibn Umar asks Uthman, "What do you hold against the Mother of the Believers over a woman who practised sorcery and confessed?" and Uthman falls silent.
Why this is a problem
A Mother of the Believers had her own slave put to death, outside any court, on a confession made while she belonged to the very person who claimed to be her victim. The "evidence" was the confession and some sorcery objects. The caliph's only complaint was that his permission had not been asked, and once Ibn Umar told him the story he dropped it.
The case shows how belief in harmful magic became capital law in the first Muslim generation. al-Shafi'i's comment in al-Bayhaqi shows even a great jurist uneasy: Umar ordered sorcerers killed, "and Allah knows best, if the sorcery was polytheism, and likewise the affair of Hafsa". The killing was justified only on the assumption that the sorcery was what it was claimed to be.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that most jurists (Abu Hanifa, Malik and Ahmad among them) hold that the sorcerer is to be executed, and Hafsa acted on that ruling. The woman confessed and the evidence was found, so the facts were not in doubt. Uthman's objection affirms that punishments belong to the state, so the report actually teaches due process.
Why it fails
The response accepts the execution and argues only about who should have ordered it. A confession from a slave owned by the alleged victim, is not reliable evidence in any system that cares about coercion. The crime itself, causing harm by sorcery, cannot be shown to have happened.
The "due process" reading also fails on the text. Uthman did not punish anyone or reverse anything. When told the facts, he "fell silent". The lesson the compilers drew was that the killing was lawful and only the procedure was irregular.
Check it yourself
"When a woman's delivery is difficult, these two verses and these words are written in a dish, then it is washed and she is given some of it to drink."
What the hadith says
This is attributed to the Companion Ibn Abbas, not to the Prophet, through Ibn Abi Layla, al-Hakam and Sa'id b. Jubayr. Ibn Abi Shayba records it in a chapter titled "The concession on Qur'an being written for someone to drink". The words to be written are a short praise of Allah followed by two verses: "As though, on the day they see it, they had stayed only an evening or its morning" (Q 79:46) and "As though, on the day they see what they are promised, they had stayed only an hour of a day" (Q 46:35). The editor al-Shathri grades it weak, "because of the state of Ibn Abi Layla". The next report says the Successors Mujahid and Abu Qilaba saw no harm in writing a verse of the Qur'an and giving it to a frightened person to drink.
Why this is a problem
Obstructed labour kills mothers and babies. The remedy offered is to drink ink washed off a dish, with verses chosen, it seems, because they speak of time passing quickly: a wish for a short labour expressed through the words of scripture. That is sympathetic magic, using the Qur'an as an ingredient.
It is not a dead curiosity. IslamQA cites this very report, through Ibn al-Qayyim, as part of the case for drinking water from washed-off verses. Islamweb records that Ahmad b. Hanbal transmitted the same childbirth formula, that Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim and al-Nawawi allowed the practice, and it permits it today with conditions.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that the chain is weak and that nothing about this comes from the Prophet. Some scholars, such as the Maliki Ibn al-Arabi, called the practice an innovation (Islamweb). Those who allow it treat it as ruqya, a prayer for healing, used alongside medicine, not instead of it.
Why it fails
The response is right that the report is weak, and the entry does not say otherwise. But the weakness made little difference. Leading Hanbali and Shafi'i scholars accepted the practice, and two of today's largest fatwa sites still allow it, citing this report among their evidence.
Calling it ruqya does not change what it is: a woman in danger drinks ink because of what the words mean. A tradition that requires its rulings to rest on sound chains kept a practice whose only Companion report in this chapter is a weak one.
Check it yourself
"He could not restrain himself, and began kissing her while the people looked on."
What the hadith says
This is a report about the Companion Abdullah b. Umar, not a saying of the Prophet. Ayyub al-Lakhmi says that on the day of the battle of Jalula, a slave-girl fell to Ibn Umar in his share of the captives; her neck was like a silver ewer; and he could not restrain himself from kissing her in front of everyone. Ibn Abi Shayba places it in a chapter titled "A man buys a slave-woman: may he have something of her short of the private part?". It is also in Kamal al-Hut's edition (16656). The editor al-Shathri grades it majhul (unknown narrator), because nothing is known of Ayyub al-Lakhmi.
Why this is a problem
The scene is a distribution of war captives. A young woman is handed to a soldier as his share of the spoils, and the narrator's interest is her beauty and his desire, which he satisfied at once and in public. She is described only by her neck.
The compiler did not record this as a scandal. He used it as a legal precedent on how far a new owner may go with a captive before he is allowed full intercourse. The question the chapter asks is how much of her body is available and when, not whether she consents.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that the chain contains an unknown narrator, so it cannot be attributed to Ibn Umar with confidence. Jurists who cited it used it only for the narrow technical question of whether an owner may kiss a captive before the waiting period that establishes she is not pregnant, and Islamic law still required that waiting period before intercourse.
Why it fails
The grading is fairly stated, and this entry does not claim the report is sound. But the response accepts the setting it describes. Women taken in war were divided as shares and became their captors' sexual property; the waiting period delayed intercourse, it did not ask for consent.
A tradition that keeps an unverified story of a Companion kissing a newly captured girl in front of a crowd, and files it as evidence for the rules on enjoying captives, shows what its jurists thought the relevant question was.
Check it yourself
"Seek help against women with nakedness (<em>al-'ury</em>): when one of them has many clothes and her finery is fine, going out pleases her."
What the hadith says
These are 'Umar b. al-Khattab's own words, not the Prophet's. Ibn Abi Shayba records them in his chapter on jealousy (al-ghayra) (18650), through Abu al-Ahwas, Abu Ishaq and Haritha b. Mudarrib, who says: ''Umar said'. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih. The manuscripts spell the key word in several ways; al-Shathri prints bil-'ury, 'with nakedness', and the al-Hut edition (17711) has the same. A version that puts the saying in the Prophet's mouth also circulated: al-Albani grades it very weak, and Ibn al-Qaysarani calls its chain munkar and says that 'the correct view is that it is 'Umar's words' (dorar). The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
The saying is a piece of household strategy for men. The problem it addresses is a woman wanting to go out, and the remedy is to keep her short of clothes, so that she has nothing to go out in. Her clothing is treated not as hers but as a lever her men can pull to keep her indoors. 'Umar does not say that going out is sinful or that her finery is unlawful; going out is simply something men should 'seek help against'.
This is not a stray remark from a weak chain. The editor rates the chain to 'Umar as sound, and the critic who rejected the Prophet-attributed version did so precisely by confirming that it is 'Umar's. Ibn Abi Shayba places it under jealousy, immediately after Ibn Mas'ud's order to 'confine the women in the houses' (18649). 'Umar is the second caliph, whose rulings Sunni law often follows.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that the version attributed to the Prophet is very weak, so this is at most a Companion's opinion and not revelation. As explained at HadithAnswers, quoting Fayd al-Qadir, 'al-'ury' means keeping women covered in their homes by not giving them lavish clothes, so that they are not tempted to go out and display themselves. The advice is about modesty and restraint, not cruelty.
Why it fails
The response is right that this is 'Umar's opinion and that 'nakedness' here means scant clothing, not literal nudity; this entry claims nothing more. But the explanation restates the problem. The goal, in the text's own words, is to stop women wanting to go out, and the means is to control what they own. A rule that a woman's wardrobe should be kept thin so that she stays at home is not modesty she chooses; it is confinement by deprivation.
Nor is 'only a Companion' a small concession. The words come with a chain the editor calls sound, from the caliph whose rulings the law repeatedly follows, preserved in a chapter that treats women's going out as a matter of men's jealousy.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 18650, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 pp. 80-81
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17711, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 4 p. 53
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 18649, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 80 (preceding report)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): sahih (sound), as 'Umar's words
- Grading: Ibn al-Qaysarani, Dhakhirat al-Huffaz 1/396 (dorar): isnaduhu munkar wa-l-sahih annahu min kalam 'Umar (the Prophet-attributed chain is munkar; it is really 'Umar's words)
- Grading: al-Albani, al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 2022 (dorar), on the Prophet-attributed version: da'if jiddan (very weak)
"Confine the women in the houses, for women are 'awra. When a woman goes out of her house, Satan looks her over and says to her: You will not pass anyone without his being taken with you."
What the hadith says
These are the words of 'Abd Allah b. Mas'ud, the Companion, not of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records them in his chapter on jealousy (al-ghayra) (18649) through Abu Ishaq and Abu al-Ahwas, who says: ''Abd Allah said'. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih; one manuscript garbles the verb 'confine' (ihbisu). The al-Hut edition has the same text (17710). A shorter version, without the command, is in the canonical Tirmidhi 1173, where Ibn Mas'ud attributes to the Prophet: 'The woman is 'awra; when she goes out, Satan looks her over.' Al-Tirmidhi calls that hasan gharib.
Why this is a problem
'Awra is the word for what must be covered and kept from view, the private parts. Tirmidhi's prophetic version already applies it to the woman as a whole and makes her going out an occasion for Satan. Ibn Mas'ud draws the practical conclusion that the canonical line leaves implicit: confine her. The verb ihbisu is the ordinary word for detaining or imprisoning, and it is addressed to men; the women are its object.
The reason given is not anything the woman does. Satan eyes her and tells her she will turn every head; the danger is her being seen, and the remedy is to keep her inside. Ibn Abi Shayba files this under jealousy, and the very next report is 'Umar's advice to keep women short of clothes so that they will not want to go out (18650). Two of the most senior Companions, in adjacent reports graded sound by the editor, treat a woman's presence outside the house as a problem for men to manage.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that this is a Companion's personal advice, not a command of the Prophet, and that the Prophet allowed women to go out for their needs and to attend the mosque. 'Awra in this context is understood as an instruction to cover, not as contempt for women.
Why it fails
It is true that this is Ibn Mas'ud's own wording, and the entry presents it so. But the core of it, 'the woman is 'awra; when she goes out Satan looks her over', is in a canonical collection as the Prophet's words. Ibn Mas'ud's command is a reading of that saying by the man who transmitted it, and the editor grades his words sound.
Permission to go out for needs is an exception carved out of a default, and the default here is stated plainly: the house, with the woman inside it. Covering is the lesser measure; Ibn Mas'ud goes past it to confinement, and the tradition preserved his order under the heading of men's jealousy.
Check it yourself
"He went at a monk who had reviled the Prophet with the sword, and said: We did not make peace with you on [the terms of your] cursing our Prophet."
What the hadith says
Ibn Abi Shayba records this act of 'Abd Allah b. 'Umar (39034) through Waki', Sufyan and Husayn, who had it from an unnamed 'shaykh'. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it majhul, unknown, 'because its narrator is unnamed'. His text says Ibn 'Umar 'rushed at' the monk (tafallata); one manuscript, and the al-Hut edition (36280), read 'drew [his sword] on' him (aslata). The report does not say the monk was killed. It stands in Ibn Abi Shayba's 'Refutation of Abu Hanifa', after al-Sha'bi's report of a blind Muslim who strangled a Jewish woman for abusing the Prophet (39033); al-Hut heads the section 'the question of killing whoever reviles the Messenger', and closes it: 'it is mentioned that Abu Hanifa said: he is not killed'.
Why this is a problem
The words Ibn 'Umar speaks are a legal argument, not an outburst. The Christians held a peace treaty; that treaty, he says, never covered insulting the Prophet. On this logic a non-Muslim subject's safety is conditional on his speech about Islam's prophet, and one insult voids it, so that a Companion may go at a monk with a sword.
Ibn Abi Shayba uses the report as exactly that kind of argument. He collects it, with the strangling story, to answer Abu Hanifa's view that such a person is not killed. The doctrine is not a relic: IslamQA 111252 states that reviling the Prophet carries death for Muslims, dhimmis and treaty-holders alike, because it breaks the covenant. The canonical Abu Dawud 4362 has the strangled Jewish woman whose blood the Prophet declared unavenged.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that the chain is unknown: the man who reported Ibn 'Umar's act is not even named, so the act cannot be confirmed. The report also does not say the monk was harmed. And the early jurists were not agreed: Ibn Abi Shayba himself records that Abu Hanifa held that the reviler is not killed. IslamQA notes that the blind man in the related story killed 'without the permission of the ruler', and that unlawfully killing a dhimmi is a major sin.
Why it fails
On the chain the response is right, and this entry does not say the monk died. But the response concedes what matters. The report survives because a major traditionist found it useful for proving that an insult to the Prophet cancels a non-Muslim's protection, and the treaty argument put in Ibn 'Umar's mouth is the same argument the modern fatwa makes.
Abu Hanifa's dissent shows that the question was argued; it does not show that the death view lost. Ibn Abi Shayba wrote his chapter to oppose Abu Hanifa on it, and the view he defended is the one the fatwa states today. Requiring the ruler's permission would change who wields the sword, not what the insult costs.
Check it yourself
"Al-Zubayr married off a little daughter of his when <em>nufisat</em>, meaning when she was born."
What the hadith says
'Urwa b. al-Zubayr reports this act of his father, al-Zubayr b. al-'Awwam, the Prophet's cousin and Companion. Ibn Abi Shayba records it in his chapter 'What they said about a man who marries off a young girl or marries one' (18234) through 'Abda b. Sulayman and Hisham b. 'Urwa; the gloss 'meaning when she was born' is part of the text. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih. The al-Hut edition has the same (17339). Ibn Abi Shayba does not name the husband. A modern compilation of Companions' rulings, al-'Atiq, quotes alongside it a fuller version from the Sunan of Sa'id b. Mansur: al-Zubayr was visiting the sick Qudama b. Maz'un when news came of a baby girl; Qudama said 'marry her to me', and when al-Zubayr asked what a man in his state wanted with a little girl, Qudama replied that if he lived she would be al-Zubayr's daughter, and if he died she would be the dearest of his heirs; and al-Zubayr married her to him. The text speaks of a marriage contract; it says nothing about consummation.
Why this is a problem
This is not a disputed age or an ambiguous word. The report itself explains the term: the girl was married off at birth. She could not consent, refuse or know; the decision was entirely her father's, and Islamic law calls a father's power to do this ijbar, compulsion. The man who did it is one of the most honoured Companions, and the chain to him is graded sound.
The fuller version, known here only as al-'Atiq quotes it from Sa'id b. Mansur, shows what such a marriage was for. The groom was a grown, sick man; the bride was a newborn; his reasons are a tie to al-Zubayr's family if he lives and, if he dies, her inheritance. The girl was not a party to a relationship but the object of an arrangement between two men about property and family ties. Ibn Abi Shayba files it as precedent, in a chapter of rulings on marrying young girls.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that a marriage contract is not consummation. As IslamQA 1493 explains, a guardian may contract a marriage for a young girl, but the marriage is not consummated until she is physically able to bear it. Nothing in this report says the marriage was consummated, and in Qudama's case the purpose was family and inheritance, not desire.
Why it fails
The response is correct about the text, which is why this entry claims only a contract. But it defends the practice rather than denying it. A marriage made for a newborn binds her to a husband she never chose, and the guarantee offered is only that sex will wait until she is 'physically able', judged by others, with no age and no consent required.
The inheritance motive is not a mitigation. It confirms that the girl was being disposed of, as an heir or a bond between families, before she could speak. A sound report of a leading Companion doing this, kept as legal precedent and still defended in modern fatwas, shows that child marriage was a working institution, not an isolated case.
Check it yourself
"'Umar wrote to his governors forbidding them to kill women and children, and ordered them to kill whoever the razor had passed over."
What the hadith says
'Umar's freedman Aslam reports this letter of the caliph 'Umar. Ibn Abi Shayba records it in his chapter 'Those whom it is forbidden to kill in enemy territory' (35341) through 'Abd al-Rahim b. Sulayman, 'Ubayd Allah and Nafi'; the al-Hut edition reads the same (33129). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih. 'Whoever the razor has passed over' means a male old enough to shave his pubic hair. But the same chain, through Ibn Abi Shayba himself, appears in al-Bayhaqi's al-Sunan al-Kubra with a different order (18683): 'Umar wrote to his governors not to impose the jizya on women and children, and to impose it only on those the razors had passed over, with the amounts of the tax. Which wording is original cannot be settled from these pages.
Why this is a problem
If the Musannaf's wording stands, it is a standing order from the caliph: in enemy territory, every male who has reached puberty is to be killed, and the only test is his body. It is the rule of Qurayza turned into general policy. The canonical collections record that at Qurayza the captives were inspected and those with pubic hair were killed (Abu Dawud 4404; Tirmidhi 1584, where al-Tirmidhi adds that some scholars take pubic hair as the sign of adulthood).
Even the tax version uses the same test. Whether the governors are told to kill or to tax, the adult male is identified by examining his body, and women and children are exempt because they are not counted as men of fighting age.
The Muslim response
Muslims can answer that the killing wording is doubtful: the identical chain, through Ibn Abi Shayba himself, gives a jizya order in al-Bayhaqi, so the Musannaf's text may be a condensation or a slip. Even read as it stands, the letter is a restriction: it forbids killing women and children, and jurists use the sign of puberty only to separate adult fighters from children, who may not be killed. Under the heading 'puberty is established by the growth of hair', the Mawsu'at al-Ijma' footnotes 'Umar's razor letter to al-Bayhaqi and Ibn Abi Shayba.
Why it fails
On the text the response is largely right, and that is why this entry is rated Basic. With the same chain giving two different orders, one about killing and one about taxing, the report cannot carry the weight of a caliphal policy of killing all adult males. It shows that the Musannaf's text, as printed in both editions and graded sound by its editor, says 'kill'; it does not show that 'Umar wrote it.
What survives either way is the criterion. The canonical Qurayza reports already use the inspection of boys' bodies to decide who lives, and the jurists made it the legal sign of adulthood. 'Not a child' and 'liable to be killed' meet in the same test.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 35341, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 18 p. 378
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 33129, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 6 p. 484
- al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18683, Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya ed. ('Ata), vol. 9 p. 329 (same chain via Ibn Abi Shayba; jizya wording)
- Sunan Abi Dawud 4404
- Jami' al-Tirmidhi 1584
- Mawsu'at al-Ijma' fi al-Fiqh al-Islami, vol. 6 p. 120 (footnotes)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): sahih (sound), on the Musannaf's text
"When Jewish and Christian women are taken captive, Islam is offered to them and they are compelled to it; whether they become Muslim or do not, they are had intercourse with and made to serve."
What the hadith says
This is the legal opinion of Ibrahim al-Nakha'i (d. AD 714/715), a Successor and leading jurist of Kufa, not a saying of the Prophet or a Companion. Ibn Abi Shayba records it twice, through Jarir, Mughira and Hammad: in the chapter 'What they said about Jewish and Christian women when they are taken captive' (34853), and in the chapter on the Jewish or Christian slave-girl, 'may he have intercourse with her or not' (17106). One word is uncertain. At 34853 the editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, prints 'they are compelled to it' (ujbirna), as does the al-Hut edition (32664); but at 17106 two manuscripts read khuyyirna and two others khuyyirat, 'they are given the choice', which reverses that clause. The rest is not in doubt: intercourse and service follow whether or not they convert. No grading of the report was found.
Why this is a problem
Read either way, the ruling makes the captive woman's body available whatever her answer. She is offered Islam, compelled to it or given the choice, and then the outcome is the same: she is had and made to serve. Her consent to intercourse is not a question the ruling asks; the only question is her religion, and even that turns out not to matter for Jewish and Christian women.
The neighbouring chapters show the system around it. Al-Nakha'i rules that captive Magian and idol-worshipping women are also offered Islam and compelled to it, and if they refuse they are made to serve but not had (34851); religion decides only whether a captive may be used sexually, not whether she is used at all. Next to him, Mujahid says that a man who acquires a polytheist slave-girl should get her to affirm 'there is no god but Allah', 'but if she refuses, that does not stop him from having intercourse with her' (34854). Captive intercourse itself is canonical (Abu Dawud 2155, on the captives of Awtas).
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that this is the opinion of a Successor, not revelation; that the manuscripts disagree on whether the women were compelled or given a choice, and 'there is no compulsion in religion' (Q 2:256) settles the question; and that relations with a captive concubine were a lawful institution of the time, regulated by the waiting period.
Why it fails
The response is right that this is al-Nakha'i's opinion and that the verb is disputed; this entry rests nothing on 'compelled'. But the part no manuscript disputes is the problem: whatever the women answer, they are had and made to serve. The variant changes how Islam is put to them, not what happens to their bodies.
'Lawful at the time' is the point. A leading jurist of the generation after the Companions, and Mujahid beside him, treated sexual access to captive women as a matter settled by their religion and their owner's right, and Ibn Abi Shayba preserved al-Nakha'i's ruling twice, in two different chapters.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 34853, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 18 p. 241
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17106, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 9 p. 254 (MS variants khuyyirna / khuyyirat)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 34851, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 18 pp. 240-241 (Magian and idolater captives)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 34854, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 18 p. 241 (Mujahid)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 32664, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 6 p. 431
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 32665, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 6 p. 431 (Mujahid, al-mushrika)
- Sunan Abi Dawud 2155
"You will come to people in their hermitages: leave them to what they have devoted themselves to. And you will come to people who have shaved bare the middles of their heads, like headbands: strike what they have shaved bare of the middles of their heads."
What the hadith says
These are the caliph Abu Bakr's instructions to an army he sent out. Ibn Abi Shayba records them in his chapter 'Those whom it is forbidden to kill in enemy territory' (35346) through Hajjaj b. Arta'a and Yahya b. Abi Muti'; the editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, says he could not establish the correct form of the chain and grades it majhul, unknown. Fuller versions of the same speech, to Yazid b. Abi Sufyan as he left for Syria, are in Musannaf 'Abd al-Razzaq 9375 and, through Malik, in al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18148: there the order is 'strike what they have shaved with the sword', followed by ten commands beginning 'do not kill a woman, nor a child, nor an old man'. 'Abd al-Razzaq's text explains: 'those who shaved their heads are the shamamisa [deacons], and those who confined themselves are those in the hermitages.' No grading of those versions was located.
Why this is a problem
The speech is often quoted as Islam's early code of restraint in war, and it does spare women, children, the old and the hermits. But it draws its line by religion and appearance, not by fighting. The recluse who has withdrawn from the world is left alone; the deacon, a working cleric of the church, is to be struck on the very spot his tonsure marks. Nothing in these versions says the deacons were armed or fighting. They are identified by their haircut and their office.
In Ibn Abi Shayba's chapter on who may not be killed, the tonsured clergy are named as people who may be. Al-Bayhaqi files his version under 'not killing those who do not fight: monks, the old and others', yet the same text orders the deacons' heads struck with the sword.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that Ibn Abi Shayba's chain is majhul, as its editor says, and that the speech as a whole is among the earliest statements of protection for non-combatants. On that reading the order to strike applies to men of fighting age in enemy territory, of whom the tonsured were simply a recognisable group.
Why it fails
The editor's verdict on Ibn Abi Shayba's chain is real, and this entry does not rest on that chain alone: the speech is preserved by three collectors, and the line about the shaved heads is in all of them. The 'fighting-age men' reading is not in the text. The speech names two groups of clergy and treats them oppositely, and the only difference it gives is that one is shut away in cells and the other has 'shaved the middles of their heads'.
A code that protects women and children but marks deacons for the sword by their tonsure is not a code of non-combatant immunity. It protects some groups and singles out others, and the clergy of a rival religion fall on the wrong side.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 35346, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 18 p. 380
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 33134, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 6 p. 484
- Musannaf 'Abd al-Razzaq 9375, al-A'zami ed., vol. 5 pp. 198-199
- al-Bayhaqi, al-Sunan al-Kubra 18148, Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya ed. ('Ata), vol. 9 p. 152 (via Malik)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): majhul (unknown); he could not establish the correct form of the chain
"The <em>jann</em> are the transformed jinn, as the apes were transformed from the Children of Israel."
What the hadith says
Ibn 'Abbas, the Prophet's cousin, used to kill snakes and order them killed, and would say this. Ibn Abi Shayba records it in his chapter on killing snakes (21087) through al-Thaqafi, Ayyub and 'Ikrima; the al-Hut edition has the same (19908). Jann here is a kind of slender snake, and maskh is metamorphosis, a punitive change of form. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih. A version attributed to the Prophet is in Musnad Ahmad and al-Tabarani, not in the six books; on it, al-Albani says its chain is sound by the standards of al-Bukhari and Muslim, while Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut judges it sound as Ibn 'Abbas's own words (sahih mawquf) (dorar).
Why this is a problem
The statement explains a kind of animal as a curse in physical form. Some snakes, on this account, are jinn who were changed into snakes, just as some Israelites were changed into apes, and he said it while killing snakes and ordering them killed. It is zoology by punishment story, from the Companion known as the 'interpreter of the Quran', with a chain the editor grades sound.
The comparison anchors it in scripture. The Quran says that Israelites who broke the Sabbath were told 'Be apes, despised' (Q 2:65), and the canonical collections extend the idea: in Bukhari 3305 the Prophet suspects that a lost group of Israelites were 'changed into rats', because rats drink sheep's milk but not camel's milk. Ibn 'Abbas's saying uses the same pattern to account for snakes.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that the Prophet-attributed form is disputed and that al-Arna'ut prefers it as Ibn 'Abbas's own view, so it is not binding revelation. Ibn Baz judged the report most likely gharib (odd) in text and chain (dorar). The transformation of the Sabbath-breakers is a Quranic punishment for a specific sin, not a statement about Jews as a people.
Why it fails
As Ibn 'Abbas's words the report is graded sound by its editor and by al-Arna'ut, and al-Albani accepted even the Prophet-attributed chain. Ibn Baz's 'odd' covers text and chain, but it does not answer the soundness verdicts given to the chains by the editor, al-Arna'ut and al-Albani. The question is not whether it binds Muslims today but what the most learned early interpreters taught, and here one of them explains animals as transformed beings.
The Sabbath story is Quranic, and the entry does not claim more. But the tradition did not leave it as one past event. It became a ready explanation for other creatures, rats in Bukhari and snakes here, and in each case the 'Children of Israel' are the example of a people turned into animals.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 21087, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 11 pp. 221-222
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 19908, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 4 p. 261
- Sahih al-Bukhari 3305
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): sahih (sound), as Ibn 'Abbas's words
- Grading: Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut, Takhrij al-Musnad 3255 (dorar), on the Prophet-attributed version: sahih mawquf (sound as the Companion's own words)
- Grading: al-Albani, al-Silsila al-Sahiha 1824 (dorar), on the Prophet-attributed version: isnaduhu sahih 'ala shart al-shaykhayn (chain sound by al-Bukhari's and Muslim's standards)
"When it is the year one hundred and forty-five, the sea will withhold its side; when it is the year one hundred and fifty, the land will withhold its side; and when it is the year one hundred and sixty, swallowing-up, metamorphosis and quaking will appear."
What the hadith says
These words are attributed to 'Ali b. Abi Talib, not to the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records them in his book of tribulations (al-Fitan), in the chapter on those who disliked joining in civil strife (40024), through Waki' and Sawwar b. Maymun, who says 'a shaykh of ours from 'Abd al-Qays called Bashir b. Ghawth' told him he heard 'Ali say it. The al-Hut edition has the same (37241). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it majhul, unknown, 'because Bashir and Sawwar are unknown'. What 'the sea will withhold its side' means is not explained in the text.
Why this is a problem
This is a prophecy with dates. If the years are counted in the Islamic calendar, as the numbers suggest, 160 AH falls in AD 776-777, more than a century after 'Ali's death in AD 661. For that year he is made to promise three signs of divine punishment: the earth swallowing people, people transformed into animals (maskh), and quaking. No one was turned into an animal in AD 776.
The saying was kept, with its dates, in a major third-century (AH) collection, in its book of end-time tribulations. Dated predictions are the one kind of prophecy that can be checked, and this one was transmitted in 'Ali's name by men no one can identify.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this report was found. The obvious answer is the editor's: its chain is majhul, two of its narrators are unknown, and it is attributed to 'Ali, not the Prophet. No Muslim is required to believe it, and its failure tells against its anonymous transmitters, not against 'Ali or Islam.
Why it fails
That answer is largely right, and this entry is rated Basic. The report proves nothing about 'Ali. What it shows is how such material entered the books: an unidentified shaykh puts a dated prophecy in a revered Companion's mouth, and a leading traditionist of the next century, writing after the date in question, records it without comment among the reports on the end time.
The weakness that excuses the report is the same weakness that admitted it. Chains of unknown men carried sayings like this into the collections, and only the later verdict of an editor marks them as unreliable.
Check it yourself
"Ali got up and kicked him with his foot, and the people got up and beat him until they killed him."
What the hadith says
A man who had been a Christian, became Muslim and then became Christian again was brought to 'Ali b. Abi Talib. 'Ali asked him about a word (kalima), and the man answered; then 'Ali got up and kicked him, and the people beat him to death. Ibn Abi Shayba records this twice through Ghundar, Shu'ba, Simak and Ibn 'Ubayd b. al-Abras: in the chapter 'The Christian who becomes Muslim and then apostatises' (30952) and in 'The man who becomes Muslim and then apostatises: what is done with him' (34933). The second, and the al-Hut edition (32740), read 'Umar asked him', apparently a slip. The text does not say what the word was, and it does not say that 'Ali ordered the killing. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades both majhul, 'because Ibn 'Ubayd b. al-Abras is unknown'.
Why this is a problem
There is no trial in this story. There is no charge read, no period to repent, no sentence and no executioner. 'Ali asks a question, hears the answer, and kicks the man; the crowd takes that as its cue and beats him until he is dead. The report does not say that 'Ali stopped them, and it records no rebuke afterwards.
Ibn Abi Shayba did not file this as a scandal. He placed it, twice, in his chapters on what is done with apostates, as an example of the practice. The death penalty itself is canonical: in Bukhari 6922 'Ali burns a group of heretics, and Ibn 'Abbas objects only to the fire, citing 'whoever changes his religion, kill him'.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this report was found on a linkable page. The obvious answer is the editor's: the narrator who reports it from 'Ali is unknown, so the incident cannot be attributed to him. Islamic law requires apostasy cases to go before a judge, with an opportunity to repent, and does not permit a crowd to kill anyone.
Why it fails
The chain is weak, and this entry claims only that the report was transmitted and filed as precedent. But the law the response appeals to is the law that makes the man's life forfeit. A judge and a period for repentance change how an apostate is killed, not whether: the canonical rule in Bukhari is 'kill him'.
What the report preserves is the scene that rule produces when the man in authority shows his anger. The tradition kept it, under the heading of what is done with apostates, without a word of disapproval for the kick or the killing.
Check it yourself
"Allah said: Had I been merciful to any one of them, I would have had mercy on her (meaning, because of her mercy to the boy)."
What the hadith says
This is a story told by 'Ubayd b. 'Umayr al-Laythi, a Successor and preacher of Mecca, not a hadith of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it in his chapter on 'Ubayd's sayings (37740) through Waki', al-A'mash and Mujahid, who heard 'Ubayd tell it: when Noah's people were drowning, a woman among them held a baby boy; she lifted him to her waist, and when the water reached him to her chest, and when it reached him again to her breasts. Then 'Allah said: Had I been merciful to any one of them, I would have had mercy on her', which the text explains as 'because of her mercy to the boy'. The al-Hut edition has the same (35009). No grading of the report was found, and it is not in the six books.
Why this is a problem
The story is told in praise of a mother's mercy, and it makes God acknowledge it. Yet she drowns, and so does the baby she is holding above the water. God's own words in the story concede that there was something in her worth mercy and then decline to show any: 'had I been merciful to any of them'. The child, who has done nothing, is not even mentioned as a candidate for mercy.
That is the moral difficulty of the Flood in miniature. The Quran tells of Noah's people drowned, and the tradition, when it imagines one mother and one infant inside that judgement, does not soften it. It portrays a mother more merciful to her child than God is to either of them.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this story was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that it is a preacher's story, not revelation, and carries no authority. On the substance, Muslims hold that the Flood was a just punishment of a people who rejected their prophet for centuries, that children who die are not punished in the hereafter, and that God's mercy in the next life is not measured by events in this one.
Why it fails
That answer is largely right on authority, and the entry is rated Basic: this is 'Ubayd's story, ungraded, and binds no one. But it was told by a well-known early preacher and kept by Ibn Abi Shayba among his sayings, which shows how the early tradition chose to picture divine judgement. It did not imagine a God who spared the infant.
Saying that the child is not punished in the hereafter concedes that he was drowned here, in a punishment aimed at others. The story's own God explains the outcome by saying that He would not be merciful to any of them, not by any guilt of the mother or her child.
Check it yourself
"How will you be when a time comes upon you in which one of you goes out from his curtained alcove to his privy and comes back transformed into an ape, and looks for his seat and does not find it?"
What the hadith says
These are the words of Hudhayfa b. al-Yaman, the Companion, not of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records them in his book of tribulations (al-Fitan) (40212) through Mu'awiya, Sharik, 'Uthman and Zadhan; the al-Hut edition has the same (37428). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it da'if, weak, because 'Uthman is Ibn 'Umayr Abu al-Yaqzan, who is weak.
Why this is a problem
The idea that Muslims will be turned into animals at the end of time is not peculiar to this weak report. In the canonical Bukhari 5590 the Prophet foretells people of his own community who will treat fornication, silk, wine and musical instruments as lawful, and says that Allah 'will transform the rest of them into monkeys and pigs, and they will remain so till the Day of Resurrection'.
Hudhayfa's saying turns that threat into a domestic scene: a man steps from his curtained bed to the latrine, comes back an ape, and cannot find his place. A Companion is made to describe the punishment of metamorphosis as something that could happen to an ordinary believer on an ordinary trip to the privy.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this report was found on a linkable page. The obvious answer is the editor's: the chain is weak, and the words are Hudhayfa's, not the Prophet's. The canonical warning of transformation concerns specific sins on a large scale, not random individuals.
Why it fails
The response is right about this report, and the entry is rated Basic. Its value is as evidence of how the canonical warning was received: the transmitters of this report took metamorphosis into apes as a literal future event, vivid enough to be pictured in a man's own house.
The canonical text does not need this report. Bukhari already teaches that members of the Muslim community will be turned into monkeys and pigs and stay that way until the Resurrection; the weakness of Hudhayfa's chain leaves that untouched.
Check it yourself
"'Umar used to beat women and servants."
What the hadith says
The Successor al-Zuhri says this about the caliph 'Umar b. al-Khattab. Ibn Abi Shayba records it in his chapter 'A man disciplines his wife' (27099) through 'Abd al-A'la and Ma'mar; the al-Hut edition has the same (25456). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it munqati', broken, because al-Zuhri never met 'Umar. The line gives no detail of whose women, why or how.
Why this is a problem
The chapter it stands in is about a man disciplining his wife, and the reports in it treat beating as a household tool. The next one has 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr say: 'Do not beat your servant; beat your wife and your child' (27100; al-Shathri: majhul). Wife-beating as such rests on the Quran (Q 4:34). What al-Zuhri adds is a portrait of the second caliph, whose conduct Sunni law treats as precedent, as a man who habitually beat women and servants.
The same chapter also records restraint. Al-Qasim reports that 'men were forbidden to beat women, and it was said: your best will not beat', and adds that the Prophet was the best of them and did not beat (27101-27102; al-Shathri calls the second mursal). The objection was recorded beside the practice, not instead of it.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this line was found on a linkable page. The obvious answer is the editor's: al-Zuhri never met 'Umar, so the report is broken and cannot establish anything about him. The Prophet himself did not beat women, and the Quran's permission in 4:34 is a last resort, hedged by the jurists until it is little more than symbolic.
Why it fails
On the chain the response is right, and the entry is rated Basic. The line cannot prove what 'Umar did. It shows what a leading early scholar said of him, and what Ibn Abi Shayba thought fitting to put in a chapter on disciplining wives.
The appeal to the Prophet's example and to 'last resort' concedes the permission. The chapter itself records both sides: a report of a Companion telling men to beat their wives rather than their servants, and others urging restraint. The restraint was the view that needed defending.
Check it yourself
"Sea water does not suffice for ablution, nor for [washing after] <em>janaba</em>. [Beneath the sea is fire, then water, then fire.]"
What the hadith says
These are the words of the Companion 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr b. al-'As, not of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records them (1405) in his chapter 'Those who disliked sea water and said it does not suffice', through Abu Dawud al-Tayalisi, Hisham, Qatada and Abu Ayyub. 'Abd Allah rules that sea water is not valid for ablution or for the major washing after sexual impurity, and the reason given is a picture of what lies under the sea: fire, then water, then fire. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades the report sahih, but notes that the sentence about fire is missing from one of his manuscripts. The al-Hut edition has the same text (1394). The idea of fire under the sea is not unique to this book: the canonical Abu Dawud 2489 has the Prophet say, through the same 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr, that 'under the sea there is a fire, and under the fire there is a sea', and al-Albani grades that version da'if.
Why this is a problem
The ruling flatly contradicts the Prophet. In Abu Dawud 83, graded sahih by al-Albani, sailors ask whether they may make ablution with sea water and are told: 'Its water is pure and what dies in it is lawful.' Here a Companion, with a chain the editor calls sound, says the opposite on a basic question of ritual purity, and he is not alone in the chapter: Ibn 'Umar is quoted, also with a chain graded sahih, saying that dry ablution with dust is dearer to him than ablution with sea water (1404), and a report through an unnamed man of the Ansar, which al-Shathri grades majhul (unknown) and in which two manuscripts lack Abu Hurayra's name, has Abu Hurayra say that sea water and bath-house water do not suffice for the major washing after sexual impurity (1406), the very Companion who narrates 'its water is pure'.
The reason 'Abd Allah gives is cosmological, not legal: the sea sits on layers of fire and water. That picture, which the canonical tradition also preserves in his name, is simply false. The report shows a senior Companion deriving a ritual rule from a mistaken view of the world, and the earliest collectors filing it as a legal opinion.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that the law follows the Prophet's explicit ruling that sea water is pure, and that 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr's view is an isolated Companion opinion that the jurists did not adopt. A Companion's personal opinion is not revelation, and the fire sentence is missing from one manuscript and, in its prophetic form, is graded weak.
Why it fails
This is largely right, and the entry is rated accordingly: the law did not follow 'Abd Allah, and the prophetic version of the fire claim is weak. But the report is not easily dismissed as a copyist's error. The editor grades the chain sound, and the same Companion is the source of the canonical fire-under-the-sea hadith, so the cosmology was most likely his.
What the report shows is how the tradition worked: Companions who had lived with the Prophet could be ignorant of, or disagree with, his ruling on whether sea water may be used for prayer, and could support their view with a belief about fire beneath the sea. The collectors preserved both the ruling and the belief.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 1405, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 2 p. 279
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 1394, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 1 p. 122
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 1404, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 2 p. 279 (Ibn 'Umar, same chapter)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 1406, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 2 p. 279 (Abu Hurayra, same chapter)
- Sunan Abi Dawud 2489
- Sunan Abi Dawud 83
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): sahih (sound), as 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr's words; the fire sentence is missing from manuscript [d]
- Grading: al-Albani (sunnah.com), on Abu Dawud 2489: da'if (weak)
"I will surely bar the private parts (<em>furuj</em>) of women of noble lineage, except to equals."
What the hadith says
These are 'Umar b. al-Khattab's own words, not the Prophet's. Ibn Abi Shayba records them in his chapter on equality of status in marriage (al-akfa' fi al-nikah) (18641), through al-Fadl b. Dukayn, Sufyan, Habib and Ibrahim b. Muhammad b. Talha, who says: ''Umar said'. Furuj, literally 'private parts', is the Arabic idiom for the right of marriage: 'Umar is vowing to block women of high lineage from being married to anyone but men of matching rank. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades the chain munqati' (broken), because Ibrahim b. Muhammad b. Talha did not hear from 'Umar. The al-Hut edition has the same text (17702). No version in the six canonical books was found.
Why this is a problem
The statement treats a woman's sexuality as the property of her lineage, to be guarded by the ruler. It is not the woman's choice of husband that matters, nor even her guardian's, but the caliph's resolve to keep 'the private parts of women of noble lineage' for men of equal birth. Marriage is framed as access to a woman's body, and access is rationed by social rank.
Ibn Abi Shayba did not file this as an anecdote. He placed it in his chapter on kafa'a, the doctrine of equality in marriage, where it serves as precedent for the idea that birth and status determine whom a woman may marry. A separate entry in this catalog, from al-Tabarani's al-Mu'jam al-Awsat (7298), has Salman the Persian saying the Prophet forbade 'us', Persians like himself, to marry Arab women; this report is a different authority making a similar cut along lines of descent.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that the chain is broken, so the words cannot be firmly attributed to 'Umar; that, even if authentic, it is an administrative policy of a caliph and not revelation; and that kafa'a is a juristic doctrine meant to protect the woman and her family from a mismatch that could harm the marriage.
Why it fails
The broken chain is real, and the entry claims no more than that the tradition preserved this as 'Umar's words. But the defence on kafa'a concedes the substance. A rule that a woman of high birth should marry only a man of equal birth is still a rule that ranks people by descent and makes a woman's marriage a matter of family standing.
The idiom is the telling part. The report does not speak of protecting the woman; it speaks of barring her private parts, with the caliph as gatekeeper. That the compiler set it in a chapter on marriage shows the outlook was treated as legal material, not as an embarrassment.
Check it yourself
"'Umar's officials wrote to him about the pigs and the wine they were taking in the <em>jizya</em>, and 'Umar wrote: Put their owners in charge of them."
What the hadith says
Suwayd b. Ghafala reports a written exchange between 'Umar b. al-Khattab and his tax officials. Ibn Abi Shayba records it (11110) through Waki', Isra'il and Ibrahim b. 'Abd al-A'la, in the chapter 'On wine: is it tithed or not?', as the last report of his Book of Zakat. The officials were receiving pigs and wine from non-Muslim subjects in payment of the jizya, the poll tax on non-Muslims, and asked 'Umar what to do; he replied wallūha arbabaha, 'put their owners in charge of them'. The al-Shathri text reads al-jariya, an evident slip for al-jizya, which is what the al-Hut edition prints (10799). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades the report sahih.
Why this is a problem
The report shows the caliphate's tax system receiving pigs and wine, things Islam forbids, as payment of a tax that existed only because the payers were not Muslims. 'Umar's answer does not condemn the practice or say that the tax cannot be met from such goods. It tells the officials to put the goods in their owners' charge. The text does not say what the owners were then to do with them, and this entry does not add it; but the report gives no sign that the tax due was cancelled, and the question it answers is whose charge the forbidden goods should be in.
Ibn Abi Shayba read it as a ruling on revenue: he put it under the question whether wine is subject to the tithe.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that Muslims may not own, handle or trade in pigs and wine, but for the non-Muslim subjects these were lawful property. 'Umar therefore kept his officials away from them and left them with their owners, respecting the subjects' own law while keeping Muslims clear of what is forbidden.
Why it fails
That reading fits the words, and the entry does not claim more than the text says. But it does not touch the point. The officials were taking these goods as jizya, and the caliph's reply was about who should hold the goods; it did not say that assessing a tax against pigs and wine was wrong. If the tax could still be paid out of these goods, keeping one's hands clean of them is a distinction of procedure.
The report is graded sound, it comes from the second caliph, and the compiler treated it as precedent on the taxation of wine. It shows the early state's revenue concerns sitting comfortably beside goods its own law calls impure.
Check it yourself
"She adorned a slave-girl and took her around, and said: Perhaps we will catch some young men of Quraysh with her."
What the hadith says
This describes an act of 'A'isha, the Prophet's wife; it is not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it (18600) in a chapter titled 'The slave-girl who is adorned and taken around', through Waki', al-'Ala' b. 'Abd al-Karim, 'Ammar b. 'Imran and an unnamed woman of 'Ammar's tribe. The verb nastad is 'to hunt' or 'to catch'; some manuscripts read natasayyad, with the same meaning. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it majhul (unknown): 'Ammar b. 'Imran is unknown and the woman who reports from 'A'isha is unnamed. Ibn Abi Shayba repeats the report in his Book of Sales (23800), under the chapter 'On adorning merchandise', again graded majhul. In the first chapter he also gives 'Umar's advice (18602): whoever wants to improve a slave-girl should adorn her and take her around, 'seeking Allah's provision through her' (majhul, an unnamed shaykh). The al-Hut edition has both (17664, 17666).
Why this is a problem
The text does not say what the 'catch' was for, and nothing in it suggests anything illicit: the natural reading is that the girl was being shown off to attract a buyer or a man to take her. That is the problem. A young woman is dressed up and walked around as bait, and the hoped-for 'catch' is the young men of the ruling tribe.
Ibn Abi Shayba leaves no doubt about how he understood it. He filed the report twice, and the second time in his Book of Sales under 'adorning merchandise'. 'Umar's parallel describes the same practice as a way of seeking provision. Whatever the weakness of the chains, the compiler treated dressing up a slave-girl for display as a recognised legal topic and a question of salesmanship.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that the chain is unknown at two points, so the act cannot be attributed to 'A'isha at all; and that, even if it happened, displaying a slave-girl to find her a buyer or a husband was ordinary custom of the time and implies no wrongdoing.
Why it fails
The weakness of the chain is conceded: this entry does not claim that 'A'isha did it, only that the tradition says so. Nor does it imply anything indecent. But the 'ordinary custom' defence is the point rather than an answer to it. The custom was that a human being was made attractive and paraded to draw in purchasers, and the scholars who preserved the report had a chapter heading ready for it.
That heading, and the second one in the Book of Sales, are Ibn Abi Shayba's own work and need no chain. They show a major early collector (Ibn Abi Shayba died in AD 849) classifying a slave-girl as merchandise to be adorned, with the Prophet's wife and the second caliph cited as examples.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 18600, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 63
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17664, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 4 p. 49
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 23800, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 12 p. 339 (Book of Sales, 'On adorning merchandise')
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 18602, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 64 ('Umar)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17666, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 4 p. 49
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): majhul (unknown: 'Ammar b. 'Imran is unknown and the woman from 'A'isha is unnamed)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 23800: majhul (several narrators unnamed)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 'Umar's 18602: majhul (Usama b. Zayd's shaykh unnamed)
"Do not let my daughters sleep lying on their backs, for Satan keeps coveting as long as they are like that."
What the hadith says
These are the words of 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz, the Umayyad caliph who died in AD 720, a generation after the Companions; they are not the Prophet's or a Companion's. His freedwoman Humayda reports that he used to say this to her. Ibn Abi Shayba records it (18432), through Hafs and 'Abd Allah b. Muslim, as the first report of a chapter titled 'Those who disliked a woman sleeping on her back'. The al-Hut edition has the same text (17513). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, gives no grading for it; his footnotes record only manuscript variants. No grading was found elsewhere.
Why this is a problem
A girl's sleeping posture is made a matter of Satan's designs. The verb yatma'u means to covet or to have hopes; the text does not say what Satan hopes for, and this entry does not supply it. But the logic is plain enough: lying on her back exposes a girl to Satan's attention, and the remedy is to police how she lies in her own bed.
The compiler generalised it. 'Umar spoke of his daughters; Ibn Abi Shayba's heading speaks of 'a woman', turning a ruler's household instruction into a topic of law on which earlier authorities were collected. A girl's posture, even asleep, is treated as something to be managed against Satan.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that this is the personal caution of a pious caliph about modesty, with no legal force; it is not from the Prophet, it has no grading, and no Muslim is bound by it.
Why it fails
That is correct as far as it goes, and the entry is rated Basic for that reason. 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz is not a source of revelation, and the report is ungraded.
But the report was not preserved as a curiosity. It opens a chapter in one of the earliest legal collections, under a heading that applies it to women in general. What it shows is an outlook, recorded and classified by the scholars, in which a girl's sleep is a moral hazard and Satan's interest in her is assumed.
Check it yourself
"[He was asked about a man who] makes a freedom contract with his [slave-woman] and stipulates in the contract that he may have intercourse with her. He said: No harm in it. He has his condition, and he may have intercourse with her."
What the hadith says
This is a ruling of the Successor Sa'id b. al-Musayyab, not a hadith of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it (18200) in the chapter 'On a man who has intercourse with his mukataba', through Yahya b. Adam, Hammad b. Salama and Yahya b. Sa'id. A kitaba is a contract by which a slave buys freedom in instalments. The manuscripts read 'his wife' (imra'atahu), and the al-Hut edition prints the same (17306); the editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, notes that the correct reading is probably 'his slave-woman' (amatahu), since a kitaba is made only with a slave. No grading is given for the report, and none was found.
Why this is a problem
A kitaba is the slave-woman's road out of slavery: she pays her price and goes free. Sa'id b. al-Musayyab allows the master to write into that very contract a clause giving him sexual access to her while she pays. The condition is valid, he says; the master 'has his condition'. Her freedom is bought with money and, on this view, with her body as well.
This is not an anonymous voice. Ibn al-Musayyab is a named authority of the Successor generation, and his answer is given without hesitation. The chapter shows that the question was live: Qatada, in the same chapter (the opening that names him is missing from five manuscripts, and one reads 'Qilaba'), holds that a master who has intercourse with his mukataba incurs the hadd, and owes her the 'uqr (a payment the editor glosses as equal to a free woman's dower) if he forced her (18198). The disagreement is about the master's rights under the contract; the woman's consent is not the measure in Ibn al-Musayyab's answer, the stipulation is.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that jurists differed, and that the prevailing view forbids a master intercourse with his mukataba, because the contract suspends his rights over her; Ibn al-Musayyab's opinion is one jurist's view, ungraded, and not part of revelation.
Why it fails
The entry presents it as exactly that: one jurist's ruling, ungraded, contradicted by others in the same chapter. Qatada's view is indeed stricter. But the point is not that every jurist agreed. It is that a named authority of the generation after the Companions saw 'no harm' in making sexual access a term of a slave-woman's purchase of her own freedom, and that this opinion was recorded and transmitted as part of the law's materials.
The fact that the question needed a chapter at all, with answers ranging from 'he has his condition' to the hadd, shows how open the matter was in the formative period.
Check it yourself
"She got women to help her against her; they held her down for her, and she destroyed her virginity with her hand. ... Al-Hasan said: I rule the <em>hadd</em> on whoever accused her, and the <em>'uqr</em> on her and on the women who held her."
What the hadith says
Ibrahim al-Nakha'i tells the story (18380), in Ibn Abi Shayba's chapter 'On a woman who destroys a woman['s virginity] with her hand: what she owes', through Hushaym and Mughira. A man had an orphan girl who ate at his table, and his wife feared he would marry her. While he was away, the wife had other women hold the girl down and destroyed her virginity with her hand. When he returned and asked why the girl no longer came to his table, the wife accused her of fornication. The girl told him the truth, he took the case to 'Ali, the women confessed, and 'Ali told al-Hasan to judge. Al-Hasan ruled the fixed penalty (hadd) on the one who made the accusation and the 'uqr on the wife and the women who held the girl; 'Ali praised the ruling. The 'uqr is the compensation for loss of virginity, which the editor elsewhere glosses as equal to a free woman's dower (note on 18198). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades the report munqati' (broken): Ibrahim did not meet 'Ali. The al-Hut edition has it as 17469.
Why this is a problem
The case is a violent assault on a defenceless girl: she is held down by several women and her virginity destroyed by hand, then she is slandered as a fornicator to cover it. In the ruling preserved here, the slander draws the hadd; the assault itself draws a payment. The harm done to the girl is priced as the value of her virginity, measured against a dower, that is, against what she would fetch in marriage.
'Ali's response is admiration. His closing words, 'If camels were set to grinding, they would grind', praise al-Hasan's cleverness; there is no word about the girl. The tradition preserved this as a model judgment.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that the chain is broken, so the story cannot be firmly attributed to 'Ali or al-Hasan. Even taken as it stands, the ruling punishes both wrongs: the false accuser receives the prescribed penalty and the assailants are made to pay full compensation, so the girl is vindicated and recompensed.
Why it fails
The broken chain is conceded and the entry is rated Basic. But the defence describes the problem rather than answering it. In this ruling the girl is 'vindicated' by a payment calculated as her lost value in marriage, while the act of holding her down and violating her carries no punishment beyond that payment.
The report was transmitted and filed under its own legal heading, with 'Ali's praise attached. It shows how this ruling framed the injury: as damage to a girl's marriageable value, compensated in money, rather than as a crime against her person.
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"I saw 'Umar beating people's hands in Rajab until they put them in the bowls, and he said: Eat, for it is only a month the people of the Jahiliyya used to venerate."
What the hadith says
Kharasha b. al-Hurr describes what he saw 'Umar b. al-Khattab do; it is 'Umar's act, not the Prophet's. Ibn Abi Shayba records it (10019) in the chapter 'On fasting in Rajab: what has come about it', through Abu Mu'awiya, al-A'mash and Wabara b. 'Abd al-Rahman. 'Umar beat people's hands in Rajab until they put them into the large food bowls, telling them to eat, because Rajab was only a month the pre-Islamic Arabs used to venerate; the chapter it is filed in shows that the issue was fasting in that month. One manuscript reads 'turning away' for 'beating'. The al-Hut edition has the same text (9758). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih.
Why this is a problem
The second caliph enforces his view of a voluntary fast with physical force, beating people's hands until they eat. And his reason sits awkwardly with the canonical sources. In Bukhari 4662 the Prophet names Rajab as one of the four sacred months of the year; 'Umar dismisses it as 'only a month the people of the Jahiliyya used to venerate'.
The tradition also pulls in the opposite direction. This catalog already carries al-Bayhaqi's report (Shu'ab al-Iman 3520) that fasting seven days of Rajab shuts the seven gates of Hell. One stream of reports promises great rewards for fasting in Rajab; another, graded sound, has the caliph beating people for doing it.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that 'Umar was stopping an innovation: treating Rajab as specially holy by fasting all of it, as the pre-Islamic Arabs had honoured it. Rajab's status as a sacred month does not make fasting through it a sunna, and the reports promising special rewards for Rajab fasting are weak or fabricated.
Why it fails
Much of that may be right on the law, and the entry is rated Basic. The Rajab-reward reports are indeed weak, and 'Umar's target was a practice he considered an innovation.
But the report remains what it is: a sound account of the ruler using force on worshippers over a voluntary fast, explained by appeal to pre-Islamic custom for a month the Prophet is reported in Bukhari to have called sacred. And the tradition that preserved this also preserved, and circulated, the very reward stories that encouraged the practice 'Umar beat out of people.
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"A man came to 'Ali and said: I have divorced my wife a thousand times. He said: She is separated from you by three; divide the rest among your wives."
What the hadith says
These are 'Ali b. Abi Talib's words, not the Prophet's. Ibn Abi Shayba records them (18751) in the chapter 'A man divorces his wife a hundred or a thousand times in one statement', through Waki', al-A'mash and Habib. The al-Hut edition has the same report (17802); two manuscripts read the pronoun as plural, without changing the sense. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it munqati' (broken): Habib did not hear from 'Ali.
Why this is a problem
The second half is almost certainly sarcasm, and this entry does not read it as a ruling that the extra divorces fall on the man's other wives. The substance lies in the first half, stated straight: a single sentence, spoken in one breath, ends the marriage irrevocably. 'She is separated from you by three.' Whatever the man meant, and whatever the wife wanted, the words did it.
The joke itself is aimed past the man at the women. His other wives, and the assumption that he has several, become the punchline.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that the chain is broken, and that 'Ali was mocking the man for his abuse of divorce: the law limits a husband to three, and anything beyond that is meaningless. The report teaches restraint, not contempt for women.
Why it fails
The broken chain is conceded and the entry is rated Basic. Reading the second half as mockery of the man is fair. But the defence leaves the first half untouched: in this report a husband's one-breath declaration ends his marriage with a finality the wife has no say in.
The joke shows how the matter was regarded. A man has abused the power of divorce so thoroughly that a Companion responds with a quip about sharing the surplus among his wives. The women appear only as the objects on which divorces are spent.
Check it yourself
"The sale of a slave-woman is her divorce."
What the hadith says
Ibn Abi Shayba has a chapter titled 'A man marries his male slave to his slave-woman, then sells her: who said her sale is her divorce'. In it, Ibrahim al-Nakha'i quotes 'Abd Allah b. Mas'ud: 'The sale of a slave-woman is her divorce' (19263). The same words are attributed to Ubayy b. Ka'b through al-Hasan (19265; most manuscripts read 'from his father' instead of 'from Ubayy'), and to Ibn 'Abbas, Jabir and Anas through Qatada (19266; missing from most manuscripts). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades all three munqati' (broken): none of these transmitters heard from the Companion he quotes. These are Companions' words, not the Prophet's. The same chapter has the Successor al-Sha'bi saying that if the buyer of a married slave-woman has intercourse with her, 'no one would fault that', though abstaining is better (19271), and Mujahid saying that when a slave-woman is sold, given away, inherited or freed, 'it is separation' (19272). The al-Hut edition has the first two reports (18255, 18256).
Why this is a problem
A slave-woman's marriage, on this view, lasts only as long as her owner keeps her. The moment he sells her, the marriage is dissolved, without any act by her or her husband, and the new owner is free to take her himself; al-Sha'bi adds that no one would blame him. Mujahid widens it to every change of ownership: sale, gift, inheritance. The husband, himself a slave of the first owner, simply loses his wife.
These are not anonymous opinions. They are attributed to as many as five Companions, including Ibn Mas'ud and Ibn 'Abbas, and the chapter heading presents them as one side of a recognised legal question. The marriage of a slave is treated as a property arrangement that a commercial transaction can undo.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that every Companion chain here is broken, and that the prevailing view among the jurists is that sale does not dissolve a slave-woman's marriage. Ibn Abi Shayba himself follows the chapter with the opposite view, 'Those who said it is not divorce, so the buyer does not have intercourse with her until [the husband] divorces', citing 'Abd al-Rahman b. 'Awf, who returned a slave-girl he had bought when told she had a husband (19273, graded sahih by al-Shathri).
Why it fails
The broken chains are conceded, and the opposing view is real. But the opposing view, as Ibn Abi Shayba frames it, still leaves her marriage in other men's hands: the buyer waits 'until he divorces', and 'Abd al-Rahman's answer was to return her to the seller. Neither side asks the woman.
And 'sale is divorce' was not an idle remark. It was preserved under the names of as many as five Companions through three separate transmitters, with Mujahid saying the same of any change of ownership and al-Sha'bi saying that no one would fault a buyer who took her, and given its own chapter. Even if the later law moved away from it, the early tradition treated a slave-woman's marriage as something her sale could cancel and her buyer could replace.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 19263, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 224
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 18255, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 4 p. 102
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 19265, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 224
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 18256, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 4 p. 102
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 19266, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 225
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 19271, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 225 (al-Sha'bi)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 19272, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 226 (Mujahid)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 19273, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 226 (next chapter, 'Abd al-Rahman b. 'Awf)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): munqati' (broken: Ibrahim does not narrate from Ibn Mas'ud)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 19265: munqati' (broken: al-Hasan did not meet Ubayy)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 19266: munqati' (broken: Qatada does not narrate from them)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 19273: sahih (sound)
"Jabir b. Zayd was asked about a girl who was divorced after her husband had consummated the marriage with her, while she did not menstruate. She counted two months and twenty-five nights, then she menstruated. He said: She waits after that three menstrual periods. ... And Ibn 'Abbas said the same."
What the hadith says
Ibn Abi Shayba's chapter is titled 'The girl (jariya) who is divorced before she has reached menstruation: what waiting period does she keep?' In it the Successor Jabir b. Zayd is asked (18976, through Yazid b. Harun, Habib and 'Amr) about a girl divorced after her husband had consummated the marriage (dakhala biha), at a time when she did not menstruate. She began counting the three-month waiting period for those who have not menstruated, and after two months and twenty-five nights her first period came; Jabir ruled that she must then wait three menstrual cycles. The next number adds: 'And Ibn 'Abbas said the same' (18977). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades this hasan (good), noting that Habib is saduq (truthful), and points to the same report in al-Bayhaqi's Ma'rifat al-Sunan (4630). The al-Hut edition has both as one number (18005). This is a ruling of a Successor, endorsed by the Companion Ibn 'Abbas; it is not a hadith of the Prophet.
Why this is a problem
The case applies Q 65:4, which gives a three-month waiting period to divorced women 'who have not menstruated'. Here the jurists do not merely discuss the verse in the abstract: they rule on a real or typical case in which a husband consummated his marriage with a girl before her first period, then divorced her. Neither Jabir nor Ibn 'Abbas expresses any surprise at the consummation; the only question is how to count her waiting period when her periods begin partway through.
Ibn Abi Shayba's heading makes the category explicit: a jariya 'who has not reached menstruation'. The marriage, the consummation and the divorce of a girl who had not yet menstruated are treated as an ordinary situation for the law to regulate, with the Companion Ibn 'Abbas cited for the answer.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that consummation always required physical fitness for intercourse, whatever the girl's age; that the verse's 'those who have not menstruated' can include grown women with late or absent menstruation; and that the report gives no age. In this case the girl began menstruating within three months, so she was evidently close to puberty.
Why it fails
It is true that no age is given, and this entry adds none; it is also true that this girl reached menarche within three months of her divorce. But the point does not depend on her age in years. The report and its chapter heading describe a wife who 'did not menstruate' and 'had not reached menstruation' at the time her husband consummated the marriage, and treat that as a normal case.
The 'physical fitness' condition is the jurists' later safeguard, not something in this text. What the text shows is that, for Jabir b. Zayd and, by a chain graded hasan, for Ibn 'Abbas, consummating a marriage with a girl who had not yet had her first period raised no question worth recording; only the arithmetic of her waiting period did.
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"The children of the Muslims are in a mountain, between Abraham and Sarah, who look after them."
What the hadith says
These are Abu Hurayra's own words; in this report he does not attribute them to the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records them (12425) in the chapter 'On the children of the Muslims', through Waki', Sufyan, Ibn al-Asbahani and Abu Hazim. The al-Hut edition has the same text (12052). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih. A milder canonical counterpart exists: in the long dream narrated in Bukhari 1386, the Prophet sees an old man at the root of a tree in a green garden with children around him, and is told that the old man is Abraham and the children are 'the offspring of the people'. The mountain and Sarah appear only in reports from Abu Hurayra, and one of them is attributed to the Prophet: 'The children of the believers are in a mountain in Paradise; Abraham and Sarah care for them until he returns them to their fathers on the Day of Resurrection.' Al-Hakim (al-Mustadrak 1436) calls that version sound by the standard of al-Bukhari and Muslim, and al-Albani grades it sahih in Sahih al-Jami' (1023). Al-Albani also calls it munkar (rejected) in this complete form in al-Silsila al-Da'ifa (5538), and Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades its Musnad chain weak (dorar.net).
Why this is a problem
Abu Hurayra makes a precise claim about the unseen: where the souls of dead Muslim children are kept (inside or on a mountain) and who looks after them (Abraham and Sarah together). In this report none of it is attributed to the Prophet (a prophetic version in al-Hakim's al-Mustadrak is disputed among the critics), and the canonical report closest to it puts Abraham in a garden under a tree, with no mountain and no Sarah. The editor nevertheless grades the chain sound, so the report is securely Abu Hurayra's.
That leaves two possibilities, neither comfortable. Either a leading Companion and prolific narrator described the afterlife with details he did not have from the Prophet, or he had them from the Prophet, as the disputed version in al-Mustadrak claims, and the canonical collections left them out. Either way, the tradition preserved his description and filed it as an answer to the question of what happens to Muslim children who die.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that this is a Companion's description of the unseen, which scholars harmonise with Bukhari's dream: Abraham caring for the children of believers. A Companion would not speak of such matters from his own opinion, and the differences in setting are details, not contradictions.
Why it fails
The harmonising answer is reasonable as far as the shared core goes, and the entry is rated Basic. But the 'a Companion would not speak from opinion' defence cuts both ways: if Abu Hurayra had this from the Prophet, the canonical record lost a mountain and a matriarch; if he did not, he was adding to the unseen on his own authority.
The report is a small example of how detail about the afterlife accumulated in the early tradition, through narrators whom the hadith critics trusted, and was then recorded with a chain an editor today grades sound.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 12425, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 7 p. 224
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 12052, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 3 p. 54
- Sahih al-Bukhari 1386
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): sahih (sound), as Abu Hurayra's words
- Grading: al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak 1436 (the Prophet's version): sahih on the conditions of al-Bukhari and Muslim
- Grading: al-Albani, Sahih al-Jami' 1023: sahih
- Grading: al-Albani, al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 5538: munkar in this complete form
- Grading: Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut, Takhrij Musnad Ahmad 14/71: isnaduhu da'if (weak chain)
"Ibn 'Abbas had intercourse with a slave-girl after he had disowned her child. ... He saw no harm in a man having intercourse with his slave-woman when she had fornicated, and held that this was a protection (<em>tahsin</em>) for her."
What the hadith says
Ibn Abi Shayba's chapter is titled 'A man has a slave-girl who commits fornication: may he have intercourse with her or not?' Two reports concern the Companion Ibn 'Abbas; neither is a saying of the Prophet. In the first (17124), Abu Ma'bad reports, through 'Amr and Ibn 'Uyayna, that Ibn 'Abbas had intercourse with a slave-girl after he had denied that her child was his. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih. In the second (17125), 'Abd Allah b. Abi Lubaba reports, through Layth and Hafs, that Ibn 'Abbas saw no harm in a man having intercourse with his slave-woman if she had fornicated, and considered it a tahsin, a way of keeping her chaste. Al-Shathri grades that one majhul (unknown), because 'Abd Allah b. Abi Lubaba is unknown. The al-Hut edition has both (16335, 16336).
Why this is a problem
The first report, graded sound, shows the master's sexual access to a slave-woman continuing regardless of what he believed about her. Ibn 'Abbas disowned her child, that is, he held it was another man's, and went on having intercourse with her. The question of the child's paternity and the woman's own conduct did not affect his use of her.
The second report turns that access into a moral service: the master's intercourse with a slave-woman who has strayed is called a 'protection' for her. Her chastity is something her owner secures by his own use of her body. That report has a weak chain, but the chapter heading shows the question was a standard one, and the sound report shows Ibn 'Abbas having intercourse with a slave-girl whose child he had disowned.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that, under the law of the time, ownership made intercourse with a slave-woman lawful, and these reports concern technical rules of paternity and chastity, not approval of fornication. The second report is weak, and the first describes only what was lawful to Ibn 'Abbas.
Why it fails
The second report's weakness is conceded, and the entry is rated Basic. But 'ownership made it lawful' is the problem, restated. The sound report shows a leading Companion, who believed his slave-woman had borne another man's child, continuing to use her sexually because she was his property.
The language of 'protection' in the second report, weak or not, is how one report frames the question in a chapter devoted to it: a woman's sexual conduct is managed by the man who owns her, and his use of her counts as her safeguard.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17124, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 9 p. 258
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 16335, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 3 p. 489
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17125, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 9 p. 258
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 16336, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 3 p. 489
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 17124: sahih (sound)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 17125: majhul (unknown: 'Abd Allah b. Abi Lubaba)
"He said: Where from? They said: From Bayt al-Maqdis. 'Umar struck them with the whip and said: A pilgrimage like the pilgrimage to the House?"
What the hadith says
Sa'id (probably Sa'id b. al-Musayyab; the chain gives only 'Sa'id') reports an act of 'Umar b. al-Khattab; it is not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it (16263) in the chapter 'To what journeys may be made', through Ibn 'Uyayna and 'Abd al-Karim. While 'Umar was inspecting the zakat camels, two riders arrived; asked where they had come from, they said Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem). 'Umar struck them with his dirra (a short whip) and said: 'A pilgrimage like the pilgrimage to the House?', meaning the Ka'ba. The al-Hut edition reads 'the zakat people' for 'the zakat camels' (15547). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades the report sahih.
Why this is a problem
The Prophet permitted exactly this journey. In Bukhari 1189 he says: 'Do not set out on a journey except for three mosques': the Sacred Mosque, his own mosque and al-Aqsa in Jerusalem. Ibn Abi Shayba put 'Umar's whipping in the chapter on that very question, as if it were part of the answer.
The report says nothing about what the two riders did in Jerusalem. They are asked where they came from, they answer, and they are struck. 'Umar's objection is to a visit to Jerusalem being treated like hajj, but the text gives no sign that they treated it so; the beating follows the answer, not an inquiry. The second caliph physically punishes travellers for a journey the Prophet named as legitimate.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that 'Umar did not object to visiting al-Aqsa, which the Prophet allowed, but to people treating the visit as a rival pilgrimage and imitating the rites of hajj there. His words, 'a pilgrimage like the pilgrimage to the House?', show that this was his concern, and the dirra was a light disciplinary whip.
Why it fails
That is a fair reading of 'Umar's motive, and the entry is rated Basic. But it supplies something the text lacks: any evidence that these two men had performed or claimed a hajj. On the report's own terms, saying 'from Jerusalem' was enough to be struck.
The case is a sound report, by the editor's grading, of a ruler enforcing his own suspicion with a whip against people doing what Bukhari's hadith permits. Whether the whip was light or not, the tradition preserved it as precedent in the chapter on permitted journeys.
Check it yourself
"'Abd Allah used to recite it: <em>famdu</em> (go on) to the remembrance of Allah, and he would say: If I recited it <em>fas'aw</em> (hasten), I would run until my cloak fell off."
What the hadith says
The received text of Q 62:9 tells believers, when the call to Friday prayer is made, fas'aw ila dhikri llah, 'hasten (or proceed) to the remembrance of Allah'. Ibn Abi Shayba's chapter 'Hastening to the prayer on Friday: who did it and who did not' records two senior Companions reading a different word. Ibrahim al-Nakha'i reports (5674, through al-A'mash and Abu Mu'awiya) that 'Abd Allah b. Mas'ud recited famdu, 'go on', and explained that if he read fas'aw he would run until his cloak fell. The next report (5675, through Hushaym, Mughira, Ibrahim and Kharasha) says 'Umar b. al-Khattab recited famdu as well. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades both munqati' (broken): Ibrahim does not narrate from Ibn Mas'ud, nor from Kharasha. The al-Hut edition has both (5558, 5559).
Why this is a problem
Muslims hold that the Qur'an was preserved word for word. Here two senior Companions, 'Umar, the second caliph, and Ibn Mas'ud, are reported reciting a word of the Friday verse that is not in the received text. Ibn Mas'ud's comment is the striking part: he avoided fas'aw because he understood it to mean 'run', and recited instead a word that does not carry that sense.
This is not proof of corruption, and the entry does not claim it is. But it is a report, preserved by an early collector in a legal chapter, of two Companions reciting the verse in a different wording, and one of them explaining it by what the received word would require.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that both chains are broken, so neither reading is established; that fas'aw in the verse means 'go with purpose', not 'run'; and that famdu was an explanatory reading, a Companion glossing the verb, not a rival text. The Qur'an's wording rests on mass transmission, not on isolated reports like these, and such readings are classed as shadhdh (irregular), not Qur'an.
Why it fails
The broken chains are conceded. And the defence's own explanation of the meaning agrees with Ibn Mas'ud's concern: the verse does not demand running. But that is the point. The report says he recited a different word, not that he explained the existing one, and it gives as his reason a fear of what the received word would oblige him to do.
The category of 'irregular readings' exists precisely because reports like this were numerous and attached to the leading Companions. The tradition did not suppress them; it recorded them and later sorted them out of the Qur'an. That sorting is a scholarly decision about variant wordings of the text, made after the fact.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 5674, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 4 p. 192
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 5558, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 1 p. 482
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 5675, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 4 p. 192
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 5559, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 1 p. 482
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 5674: munqati' (broken: Ibrahim does not narrate from Ibn Mas'ud)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 5675: munqati' (broken: Ibrahim does not narrate from Kharasha)
"Ubayy used to recite it: Fasting of three <em>consecutive</em> days."
What the hadith says
Q 5:89 sets the expiation for a broken oath; whoever cannot feed, clothe or free, must fast 'three days'. Ibn Abi Shayba's chapter 'Fasting three days in the expiation of an oath: may they be split or not?' records (12762, through Waki', Abu Ja'far, al-Rabi' and Abu al-'Aliya) that the Companion Ubayy b. Ka'b recited the phrase with an extra word: fa-siyamu thalathati ayyamin mutatabi'at, 'fasting of three consecutive days'. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it hasan (good), holding that Abu Ja'far al-Razi and al-Rabi' b. Anas are saduq (truthful) 'according to the correct view'. In the same chapter, the Successor Ibrahim al-Nakha'i, asked about the three days, answers: 'In our reading: fasting of three consecutive days' (12760, no grading given). The al-Hut edition has both, though in 12368 it vocalises the name as abi, 'my father' (Abu al-'Aliya's father), not Ubayy, so the attribution to Ubayy rests on al-Shathri's reading (12368, 12366).
Why this is a problem
The word mutatabi'at, 'consecutive', is not in the received Qur'an. Here it is reported, with a chain graded hasan, as part of Ubayy b. Ka'b's recitation of the verse, and a leading Successor speaks of it as 'our reading'. The difference is not stylistic: it decides the legal question the chapter is about, whether the three days of fasting may be split.
Ibn Abi Shayba uses the reading as evidence in that legal debate. A word absent from the standard text was being cited as Qur'an to settle points of law in the generation after the Companions.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that 'consecutive' is a shadhdh (irregular) reading: either an explanatory word a Companion added to his own copy, or a recitation that was later abrogated. The Qur'an rests on mass transmission, and a single Companion's reading, however well attested, is not part of it.
Why it fails
Classing the word as irregular is a decision about which reports count as Qur'an; it does not make the report go away. On a chain the editor calls good, the Companion Ubayy b. Ka'b recited the verse with a word the standard text lacks, and a leading Successor was still calling it 'our reading'.
Both explanations offered concede something. If it was a gloss, Companion copies mixed commentary into the text closely enough for later generations to cite it as reading; if it was abrogated, the verse once had a different, legally decisive wording.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 12762, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 7 p. 318
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 12368, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 3 p. 88
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 12760, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 7 p. 318 (Ibrahim al-Nakha'i)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 12366, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 3 p. 87
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): hasan (good; Abu Ja'far al-Razi and al-Rabi' b. Anas are saduq 'according to the correct view')
"In the reading of Ubayy: <em>Khul'</em> is an irrevocable divorce."
What the hadith says
Khul' is the separation a wife obtains by giving up her dower or paying her husband. Ibn Abi Shayba's chapter 'A man separates from his wife by khul': how many divorces does it count as?' records (19475) that a man named Maymun said: 'In the reading of Ubayy: khul' is an irrevocable divorce.' No such sentence is in the received Qur'an. The chain differs between editions: al-Shathri prints 'Umar b. Harun from Thawr from Maymun', while the al-Hut edition reads 'Umar b. Harun from 'Amr b. Maymun' (18445). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades the report munqati' (broken), because Maymun did not meet Ubayy.
Why this is a problem
Taken at face value, the report places a legal ruling, phrased like a sentence of scripture, in the reading of Ubayy b. Ka'b, a Companion the same collection elsewhere reports reciting a verse with an extra word. The ruling settles exactly the question the chapter asks.
The word 'reading' (qira'a) is ambiguous: it can mean a Qur'anic text or a scholar's legal teaching, and the report does not say which. The same collection reports Ubayy reciting a variant wording of a verse (12762, Q 5:89), and Ibrahim al-Nakha'i speaking of 'our reading' for a word absent from the Qur'an (12760). Here the formula introduces a sentence that has no counterpart in the Qur'an at all.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that the chain is broken, so nothing is established; and that qira'a here can mean a Companion's legal reading or interpretation, not a verse. Whatever Ubayy taught about khul', it was never part of the Qur'an.
Why it fails
This is largely right, and the entry is rated Basic. The chain is broken, the narrator's identity varies between editions, and the meaning of 'reading' is open.
What remains is how the report was used. An early legal collector cited a sentence attributed to 'the reading of Ubayy' as evidence on a point of divorce law. The line between what a Companion recited and what he ruled was blurred enough in the early sources that such a report could be transmitted and cited without comment.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 19475, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 10 p. 274
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 18445, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 4 p. 118
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 12762, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 7 p. 318 (Ubayy on Q 5:89)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 12760, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 7 p. 318 (Ibrahim, 'our reading')
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): munqati' (broken: Maymun did not meet Ubayy)
"'Umar heard that a man fasted all the time. He struck him with the whip and kept saying: Eat, O Dahr! Eat, O Dahr!"
What the hadith says
Abu 'Amr al-Shaybani reports an act of 'Umar b. al-Khattab; it is not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it (9811) in the chapter 'Those who disliked perpetual fasting', through Waki' and Isma'il b. Abi Khalid. 'Umar heard that a man fasted continuously (yasumu al-dahr), struck him with his dirra (a short whip) and kept saying 'Eat, O Dahr!', turning the word for 'all time' into a mocking nickname. The editor notes that Ibn Hajar's Fath al-Bari quotes it as 'O Dahri'. The al-Hut edition has the same report (9556). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih.
Why this is a problem
Fasting is an act of worship, and continuous fasting, however unwise, is a voluntary excess of devotion. The second caliph's response is to whip the man and mock him with a nickname while he does it. The report is graded sound and was filed by Ibn Abi Shayba as evidence on the legal question.
Together with 'Umar beating people's hands to make them eat in Rajab, recorded in the same book, it shows a pattern in which the ruler polices private devotion with physical force. Whatever the merits of the rule, these reports present the whip as the caliph's instrument of religious correction.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that perpetual fasting was disapproved, as the chapter heading itself records; that 'Umar, as ruler, was entitled to correct people who exceeded the limits of worship; and that the dirra was a light disciplinary whip, meant to rebuke rather than to injure.
Why it fails
That 'Umar was enforcing a recognised disapproval is fair, and the entry is rated Basic. But the defence takes for granted what is in question: that a ruler correcting a man's voluntary fast should do it by striking him and taunting him with a nickname.
A light whip is still a whip. The report, sound by the editor's grading, records the second caliph's method of instruction in matters of worship, and the collectors kept it as precedent.
Check it yourself
"'Umar b. al-Khattab used to kill the louse in the prayer until its blood showed on his hand."
What the hadith says
'Abd al-Rahman b. al-Aswad describes a habit of 'Umar b. al-Khattab; it is not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it (7680) in the chapter 'A man takes hold of a louse during the prayer', through Isma'il b. 'Ayyash and Abu Bakr b. Abi Maryam. The al-Hut edition has the same text (7478). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it da'if (weak), because Abu Bakr b. Abi Maryam is weak.
Why this is a problem
The scene is of 'Umar, during the ritual prayer, killing lice until their blood showed on his hand. Prayer in Islam demands ritual purity, and blood is a recurring concern in the purity rules; here it is on the worshipper's hand mid-prayer, and the report presents this as 'Umar's habit.
The report is weak and its polemical value is modest. Its interest is in what the tradition found worth recording and classifying: a chapter of its own on handling lice in the prayer, opening a window on the conditions of the time and on how they were reconciled with the rules of purity.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that the report is weak; and that, in any case, jurists permit killing small vermin during the prayer and treat the tiny amount of blood from a louse as negligible, so nothing in it touches the validity of the prayer. Lice were a common affliction of the time and imply no fault.
Why it fails
This is largely right, and the entry is rated Basic accordingly. The report is weak, and the jurists' ruling on negligible blood answers the purity question on its own terms.
What remains is a small but real illustration: an early collection gave the topic its own chapter heading, and transmitted, with a weak chain, a picture of the second caliph killing lice during prayer as a matter of routine.
Check it yourself
"A man wanted to marry a girl born of fornication, and asked one of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah about it. He said: No. For me to marry her mother is dearer to me than to marry her."
What the hadith says
Ibn Abi Shayba's chapter is titled 'A man seeks children from a girl born of fornication and has intercourse with her: who disliked that'. In it Sayyar, a freedman of Mu'awiya, reports (17121, through Sulayman al-Taymi and his son Mu'tamir) that a man who wanted to marry a girl born of fornication (bint zina) asked an unnamed Companion of the Prophet, who answered that he would rather marry the girl's mother than marry her. The manuscripts vary slightly in the wording of the answer, without changing the sense; the al-Hut edition reads 'Yasar' for 'Sayyar' (16332). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it hasan (good), Sayyar being saduq (truthful). In the same chapter Ibn 'Umar, asked about the child of fornication, answers only: 'Women are plentiful' (17117, graded sahih; al-Hut 16328). These are Companions' opinions, not the Prophet's words.
Why this is a problem
The girl has done nothing. Her only defect is the circumstances of her birth, yet a Companion, with a chain graded good, rules her out as a wife, and says he would sooner marry her mother, the woman who actually committed the fornication. The stigma passes from the parent to the child and lands harder on the child.
Ibn 'Umar's 'Women are plentiful', graded sound, is terse and need not be read as a prohibition, but it plainly steers the questioner away. Other authorities in the chapter, al-Hasan and Ibrahim al-Nakha'i, see no harm in a man taking such a girl as a concubine (17120, 17118). The chapter therefore weighs a girl born of fornication as a possible bedfellow or mother of one's children, while a Companion considers her unworthy of marriage.
The Muslim response
No Muslim answer to this specific report was found on a linkable page. The standard answer is that most jurists allow marrying a child born of fornication, since the Qur'an holds that no soul bears another's burden, and that these were personal preferences of individuals, not law. Ibn Sirin, in the same chapter, asked about a man taking such a girl as a concubine, says: 'What is its fault in what its parents did?' (17122).
Why it fails
Ibn Sirin's answer is the right one, and the entry presents the Companion's view as a view, not the law. But the point is who held which view. The answer that refuses to blame the child comes from a Successor, though he gave it about taking her as a concubine; the reports that recoil from the girl come from two Companions, one unnamed and one Ibn 'Umar, both on chains the editor accepts.
The principle that no one bears another's sin is stated in the Qur'an. The Companions quoted here, the generation Sunni Islam holds up as its best, are recorded applying something closer to the opposite: a child pays socially for her parents' act, and the mother who committed it is the more acceptable bride.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17121, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 9 p. 257
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 16332, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 3 p. 489
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17117, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 9 p. 256 (Ibn 'Umar)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 16328, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 3 p. 489
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17118, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 9 p. 256 (Ibrahim)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17120, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 9 p. 257 (al-Hasan)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 17122, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 9 p. 257 (Ibn Sirin)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 17121: hasan (good; Sayyar is saduq, truthful)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote), on 17117: sahih (sound)
"Umar wrote two letters about it: a letter in public, 'He is to be killed', and a letter in secret, 'The blood-money is to be taken'."
What the hadith says
This is a report about the caliph 'Umar, not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba places it in his chapter 'A man finds a man with his wife and kills her'. He first gives a bare chain from Waki' through al-Mughira b. al-Nu'man to Hani' b. Hiram (29719), then adds: 'Yahya b. Adam added in it, from Malik b. Anas, from Hani' b. Hiram' (29720), that a man found another man with his wife and killed her. The case was written to 'Umar, who answered with two letters, one public and one secret. The al-Hut edition has the same text (27885; some manuscripts spell the name Hizam). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it majhul: its narrator Hani' b. Hiram is unknown. The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
The report describes a ruler who announces one law and applies another. In public the killer is to die for it (the text says only 'he is killed'; the husband is the natural reading), which would deter others. In private the sentence is quietly commuted to a payment, which spares the man. The wife's death is settled with money once the public is satisfied that the law is strict.
The surrounding reports show why the case was hard. A few entries earlier the same chapter records the Prophet's response to Sa'd b. 'Ubada's vow to strike such a man with the sword: 'Do you wonder at Sa'd's jealousy? By God, I am more jealous than Sa'd' (29718; editor: sahih, Bukhari and Muslim). Here a husband's jealous killing is answered not with a clear rule but with a public face and a private settlement.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The obvious answer is the editor's verdict: the only narrator between the event and the books is unknown, so nothing can be built on it. Muslims would add that Islamic law lets the victim's heirs accept blood-money instead of retaliation (Qur'an 2:178), so a private settlement is not in itself a perversion of justice.
Why it fails
The weak chain is a fair answer, and this entry does not claim that 'Umar did this. But the report's point is not that blood-money was possible. It is that 'Umar had one answer written for the public and another for the case. If the heirs had freely chosen compensation, there would be nothing to hide.
What the report preserves is an early picture of how a wife-killing by a jealous husband might be handled: a severe law for display and a lenient one in practice. Ibn Abi Shayba kept it, with its chain, among the precedents on exactly this question.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 29720, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 15 p. 272
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 27885, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 5 p. 450
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 29719, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 15 p. 271 (chain only)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 29718, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 15 p. 271 (Sa'd's jealousy)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): majhul li-jahalat Hani' b. Hiram (unknown, because Hani' b. Hiram is unknown)
"If a man commits zina with a young girl, he is flogged and not stoned, and nothing is due from the girl; and if a boy commits zina with a woman, she is flogged and not stoned, and the boy is given a discretionary punishment."
What the hadith says
These are the rulings of two Successors, not sayings of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba's chapter is titled 'A man commits zina with a young girl (sabiyya): what is due from him?' It holds two reports. In the first, al-Hasan al-Basri gives the ruling quoted above (30911; al-Hut 28971). In the second, Ibrahim al-Nakha'i is asked about a man who deflowered a young girl and answers: 'He owes her her 'uqr', the payment that stands in for a dower (30912; al-Hut 28972). The girl's age is not stated. The editor gives no grading for either report, and none was found elsewhere. The six canonical books contain neither ruling.
Why this is a problem
Stoning is the penalty for a married man who commits zina with an adult woman. According to al-Hasan, if the victim is a child, the man is never stoned, even if he is married; he is only flogged. Sex with a child is treated as a lesser offence than sex with an adult, as if the child's age made the act less than full zina. The rule is symmetrical: a woman who has sex with a boy also escapes stoning.
Al-Nakha'i's answer, as recorded, names only one consequence: the man owes the girl a payment equal to a dower. The chapter heading asks what is due from such a man, and the two answers it preserves are 'flogging, not stoning' and 'her compensation'.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The standard answer is that these are two Successors' personal opinions, without a prophetic text behind them, and binding on no one. Al-Hasan does punish the man and expressly clears the girl of any blame, and al-Nakha'i's payment is compensation owed to her, not a price for the act.
Why it fails
Clearing the girl of blame is the least the rule could do. The question is why the man is punished less than he would be for adultery with a woman. Neither jurist says that sex with a child is worse than zina, and the chapter, the place where a reader would look for the answer, preserves no opinion that it is.
Calling them 'only opinions' does not remove the problem. Al-Hasan al-Basri and Ibrahim al-Nakha'i were among the leading jurists of Basra and Kufa, and Ibn Abi Shayba recorded their answers as precedents on this exact question.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30911, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 16 p. 40
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 28971, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 5 p. 561
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 30912, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 16 p. 40 (al-Nakha'i)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 28972, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 5 p. 561
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba chapter heading, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 16 p. 40
"They are both flogged, the father and his daughter, a hundred each, if she has reached puberty."
What the hadith says
This is the ruling of al-Zuhri (Ibn Shihab), a Successor, not a saying of the Prophet. In the chapter 'A man sells his wife, or a free man sells his daughter', Ibn Abi Shayba records through Ibn Jurayj and Ma'mar that al-Zuhri was asked about a man who sold his daughter; the buyer had intercourse with her, and the father said, 'Need drove me to sell her' (30615; al-Hut 28706). Al-Zuhri ruled as quoted. The price is returned to the buyer; the buyer owes her a dower for the intercourse, which the father must then repay him. If the buyer knew she was free, he pays the dower without repayment and is flogged a hundred. If she is a girl who does not yet understand, the father receives an exemplary punishment. The editor gives no grading, and none was found. The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
The girl was sold by her own father, out of poverty, to a man who then had sex with her as his property. Al-Zuhri's ruling flogs her a hundred lashes, the same as her father, on one condition only: that she has reached puberty. Nothing is asked about whether she agreed to the sale, whether she could refuse her father, or whether she could refuse the man who bought her.
The buyer, who actually had intercourse with her, is not flogged at all if he believed she was a slave; he pays a dower and gets it back from the father. In this ruling the girl who was sold is punished more than the man who bought and used her.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The standard answer is that this is a Successor's opinion, not revelation. It treats the selling of a free person as the grave sin the Prophet condemned (God is the opponent of 'one who sells a free person and eats the price', Bukhari 2227), and it punishes the girl only as an adult who went along with the sale, sparing her entirely if she is too young to understand.
Why it fails
That reading supplies something the text does not say. Al-Zuhri asks only whether she has reached puberty, not whether she knew or agreed. In the previous report, al-Zuhri rules that when a free man is sold, both the seller and the one who acknowledged the sale are punished (30614). Here the girl is not said to have acknowledged anything; she is simply a daughter whose father sold her.
The rule's logic, as we read it (al-Zuhri gives no reason), is that intercourse outside a valid marriage or ownership is zina, and an adult party to zina is flogged. Applied to a girl her father sold, it makes the victim of a sale and of the sex that followed a criminal, while the buyer who acted in good faith pays and recovers his money.
Check it yourself
"There is no hadd on the People of the Book."
What the hadith says
These are Ibn 'Abbas's own words, not the Prophet's. Ibn Abi Shayba gives them through Waki', Shu'ba, 'Amr and Mujahid (30462; al-Hut 28558), in a chapter titled 'Those who held that there is no hadd on the People of the Book for zina or drinking wine'. The report before it has Ibrahim al-Nakha'i saying the same for both offences (30461). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades Ibn 'Abbas's saying sahih. The six canonical books do not contain it; they record the opposite act: the Prophet had a Jewish man and woman stoned for adultery (Bukhari 6819).
Why this is a problem
Ibn 'Abbas, the Prophet's cousin and one of the most cited authorities on the Qur'an, states without qualification, in a chain the editor calls sound, that the prescribed punishments do not apply to Jews and Christians. Bukhari reports that the Prophet himself stoned two Jews. Either the Prophet applied a penalty that, by Ibn 'Abbas's rule, did not apply, or Ibn 'Abbas taught a rule his own Prophet had contradicted.
The disagreement was not a passing one. Ibn Abi Shayba gives it a chapter of its own, and al-Nakha'i in Kufa held the same view. Whether the prescribed penalties reached Jews and Christians was not settled even for a Companion as close to the Prophet as Ibn 'Abbas, and a leading jurist of the next generation held the same view.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The usual reconciliation is that the two are about different situations. In Bukhari the Jews brought their case to the Prophet and he judged them by asking what the Torah prescribed, and the Qur'an gives him the choice: 'If they come to you, judge between them or turn away from them' (5:42). Ibn 'Abbas's saying, on this reading, means that Muslims do not seek out and punish Jews and Christians for wine and zina within their own communities.
Why it fails
That reconciliation is reasonable, and this entry is rated Basic because of it. But it is a later harmonisation; Ibn 'Abbas's words, as recorded, make no such distinction. A reader of this sound report would conclude that Jews and Christians are never subject to the hadd, which is not what happened in Medina.
The case shows how much of the law rests on reconciling sound reports that, read plainly, conflict. A penalty of death by stoning depended on which of the two one followed.
Check it yourself
"By God, if she did not give her to you, you will not return to your family except stoned."
What the hadith says
This is a report about 'Umar and al-Mughira (the report gives no father's name; he is presumably the Companion al-Mughira b. Shu'ba), told by Nafi', who did not meet 'Umar; the editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it munqati' (broken chain). Ibn Abi Shayba records it in the chapter 'A man has intercourse with his wife's slave-woman' (30447; al-Hut 28545). A slave-woman came to 'Umar: 'Al-Mughira has intercourse with me, and his wife calls me an adulteress. If I am hers, stop him from coming to me; if I am his, stop his wife from slandering me.' Al-Mughira admitted it and said his wife had given her to him. 'Umar swore the oath quoted above and sent two men (the words 'two slave men' are missing from the manuscripts and supplied by the editor from other sources) to tell the wife that if she had not given her, they would stone him. She cried: 'Alas! Do you want my husband stoned? No, by God, I did give her to him.' And 'Umar let him go. The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
The slave-woman does not ask to be left alone. Her complaint takes it for granted that her body belongs to whoever owns her; she asks only to be told which of the two it is: if the wife, the husband must stop; if the husband, the wife must stop calling her an adulteress. 'Umar's inquiry follows the same logic. The only question is ownership. Her consent is never mentioned by anyone.
The outcome turns on the wife's word, given after she is told that the alternative is her husband's death. Before that she had been calling the slave-woman an adulteress, which is what one would say if the intercourse was not lawful. The report does not resolve the contradiction; once the wife says the words, the case is closed.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The standard answer is that the chain is broken, since Nafi' was not present. Muslims would also say that the story, if true, shows 'Umar's even-handedness: he was ready to stone a prominent Companion, and he protected the slave-woman from slander. Sexual relations with a woman one owns are permitted by the Qur'an and were not in question.
Why it fails
The broken chain is a real weakness, and this entry claims only what Ibn Abi Shayba recorded. But the defence confirms the problem. The slave-woman was protected from the charge of adultery, not from the man; the remedy for her was to establish that he owned her.
The story was kept as a precedent in a chapter about men who have intercourse with their wives' slave-women. What it settles is that a gift of a woman from wife to husband turns what would be a stoning offence into lawful sex, and that the woman herself has no voice in the transfer.
Check it yourself
"He called for the slave and beat the two of them a severe beating, and ordered that the slave be sold in a foreign land."
What the hadith says
This is a report about 'Umar, told by Abu Nawfal b. Abi 'Aqrab, who did not meet him; the editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it munqati' (broken chain). Ibn Abi Shayba records it in the chapter 'A woman marries her slave' (30679; al-Hut 28763). A woman came to 'Umar and said: 'Commander of the Faithful, I am a woman as you see, and other women are more beautiful than I. I have a slave whose religion and trustworthiness I am satisfied with, and I wanted to marry him.' 'Umar called for the slave, beat them both severely (darban mubarrihan), and had the slave sold in a foreign land. The six canonical books do not contain it. Abd al-Razzaq preserves a similar story in which 'Umar beats a woman who wanted to free her slave and marry him.
Why this is a problem
The woman did nothing but ask. She explained her situation frankly: other women were more beautiful than she, and she had a slave whose religion and trustworthiness she approved. The answer to her question was a severe beating. The slave, who in the report says and does nothing, is also beaten, and then sold away to a distant land.
Men in the same law could take the slave-women they owned as concubines. A woman who asked to marry a slave she owned received violence instead of a ruling.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The standard answer is that the chain is broken, so the beating cannot be firmly attributed to 'Umar. The jurists hold that a woman may not marry a slave she owns, because a wife cannot also be her husband's owner; if 'Umar was severe, it was to stop a forbidden marriage, not a punishment for asking.
Why it fails
The broken chain is a fair objection, and this entry is rated Basic. But the response explains the rule, not the beating. A question answered with a ruling would have needed no violence, and the slave had done nothing at all.
What the tradition preserved, in two separate collections, is a picture of 'Umar treating a woman's wish to marry her slave as an offence to be beaten out of her, and Ibn Abi Shayba kept it as a precedent in the chapter on this question.
Check it yourself
"When it is the year one hundred and thirty-six and you have not seen a sign, then curse me in my grave."
What the hadith says
These are the words of the Companion 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr b. al-'As, not the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records them in his book of tribulations (al-Fitan), in the chapter on those who disliked joining in civil strife (40056; al-Hut 37273), through Yazid b. Harun, Hammad b. Salama, Abu al-Jawza' and Muslim b. Yasar. Several manuscripts read ''Umar' for ''Amr'. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it majhul (unknown): the Abu al-Jawza' in this chain is al-Muhallimi, who is unknown. The text does not say what the 'sign' (aya) would be. The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
This is a dated prediction with its own test built in. If the years are counted from the Hijra, 136 AH fell in AD 753-754, generations after the speaker's lifetime. He staked his own reputation on it: if nothing happened, curse me.
Because the 'sign' is undefined, almost anything that happened in that year could be counted as fulfilment. That vagueness is what makes the prediction safe to keep. The same chapter holds a similar dated prophecy attributed to 'Ali, for the year 160, and both were preserved in a major collection, under the heading of end-time tribulations, by a compiler who lived after the dates had passed.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The obvious answer is the editor's: one narrator is unknown, so the saying cannot be firmly attributed to 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr, and in any case it is a Companion's statement, not revelation. Muslims might add that the 'sign' is unspecified, so the prediction cannot be shown to have failed.
Why it fails
That answer is largely right, and this entry is rated Basic. The report proves nothing about 'Abd Allah b. 'Amr.
What it does show is how this material entered the books. A chain containing an unknown man carried a dated end-time prediction into the collection under a Companion's name, and it was recorded without comment. The vagueness that protects it is the same vagueness that makes it useless as a prophecy.
Check it yourself
"What if I told you that you will take your Book and burn it and throw it into the privies: would you believe me?"
What the hadith says
These are the Companion Hudhayfa b. al-Yaman's own words, and he says so: 'I will tell you, and I do not say: the Messenger of God said.' Ibn Abi Shayba records them in his book of tribulations (40163; al-Hut 37380) through al-A'mash, al-Minhal and Abu al-Bakhtari. Hudhayfa says Muslims will do whatever the Children of Israel did. Asked whether there will be apes and pigs among them, he answers: 'What exempts you from that?' If he told them all he knew, he says, they would split into three: one party would fight him, one would not help him, and one would call him a liar. He then asks whether they would believe him if he said they will burn their Book and throw it into the privies, break their qibla, and that 'your mother' will go out with a party of Muslims and fight them. Each time they answer: 'Glory be to God! Will this happen?' Two manuscripts read 'distort it' for 'burn it', and two lack the qibla and 'mother' sentences. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it munqati': Abu al-Bakhtari did not hear from Hudhayfa. He notes that Ibn Abi Dawud (al-Masahif 62) also records it, and that Ibn Abi Hatim, al-Hakim and Nu'aym record a similar version. The six canonical books do not.
Why this is a problem
Hudhayfa predicts that Muslims will burn their own scripture and throw it into latrines. He also refuses to rule out their being turned into apes and pigs, and says that if he spoke openly, some of his hearers would fight him. Hudhayfa is the Companion who, according to Bukhari, came to 'Uthman alarmed at the differences in Qur'an recitation and urged him to act 'before they differ about the Book as the Jews and the Christians did' (Bukhari 4987). That campaign ended with 'Uthman ordering the other codices burned.
The report was kept in the tradition's own collections, including Ibn Abi Dawud's book on the Qur'an codices. Whatever Hudhayfa meant, early transmitters thought it worth preserving that a senior Companion expected the community to treat its Book with contempt, and to fight one another.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The standard answer is that the chain is broken and the words are expressly Hudhayfa's, not the Prophet's. As a warning, it echoes the sound hadith 'You will follow the ways of those before you' (Bukhari 7320). Muslims would add that God has promised to preserve the Qur'an (15:9), so no future misuse of copies could alter the revelation itself.
Why it fails
The broken chain is a fair point, and this entry claims only what Ibn Abi Shayba recorded. But the defence does not explain why a Companion would expect, and put only as a question, that Muslims would burn their scripture and throw it into privies. The manuscript variant 'distort it' is not more comforting.
The promise of preservation is a claim about the text, not about how the community would treat it. The report preserves an early fear, voiced by a man close to the codex controversy, that the Book would be burned by its own people. That fear was transmitted by several collectors, not suppressed.
Check it yourself
"The sunna has been, regarding a man who beats his wife and wounds her, that she does not take retaliation from him, and he pays compensation for it."
What the hadith says
This is the statement of al-Zuhri, a Successor, about established practice; it is not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it through 'Isa and al-Awza'i (29288; al-Hut 27489) in the chapter 'Retaliation between men and women'. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it mursal, because al-Zuhri is a Successor and does not name his source. In the next report al-Zuhri says more briefly: 'A woman is not given retaliation against her husband' (29289). The chapter records disagreement: al-Sha'bi and Ibrahim al-Nakha'i hold that men and women retaliate against each other for deliberate injury (29285), while Hammad holds that there is no retaliation between them short of killing (29291). The six canonical books do not contain al-Zuhri's statement.
Why this is a problem
Al-Zuhri does not offer this as his own view. He presents it as the sunna, the settled practice he received. A husband may beat his wife and draw blood, and she cannot have the same done to him; he pays compensation for the wound instead. Any man who wounded another free person deliberately could face retaliation, but a husband who wounds his wife is outside that rule.
The surrounding reports show what this meant in practice. In the same chapter al-Sha'bi is asked about a man who forced his wife down to have intercourse with her and broke her tooth; his answer is only: 'He is liable [to compensate]' (29290).
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that al-Zuhri's report is mursal and that the schools differ. Malik, in the Muwatta, states that 'when a man intentionally goes to his wife and gouges out her eye or breaks her hand or cuts off her finger or such like, and does it intentionally, retaliation is inflicted on him'. Only an unintended injury from a disciplinary strike is settled with blood-money.
Why it fails
Malik's position is real, and this entry does not claim that all jurists followed al-Zuhri. But Malik's answer keeps the premise. In the same passage he speaks of 'a man who strikes his wife with a rope or a whip and hits what he did not mean to hit'; for that he pays blood-money and is not subject to retaliation. Malik attaches no penalty to striking a wife with a rope or a whip as such; only wounds outside its intended target are paid for.
Al-Zuhri, a leading Medinan authority, called 'no retaliation for the wife' the established sunna, and Ibn Abi Shayba preserved it beside a ruling that a husband who broke his wife's tooth while forcing her to sex owes only compensation.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 29288, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 15 p. 171
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 27489, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 5 p. 411
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 29289, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 15 p. 171
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 29285, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 15 p. 170
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 29290, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 15 p. 171
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 29291, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 15 p. 172
- Muwatta Malik, Book 43, no. 15 (sunnah.com; Malik's own statement in the chapter on retaliation)
- Muwatta Malik, Book 43 (sunnah.com chapter page, where the passage was read)
- Grading: Sa'd al-Shathri (editor's footnote): mursal (al-Zuhri is a Successor)
"I witnessed 'Abd Allah b. 'Ubayd b. Ma'mar when a Magian who had built a fire-temple in Basra was brought to him, and he struck off his head."
What the hadith says
This is an eyewitness account of an official's act, not a hadith. Ibn Abi Shayba records it through 'Abd al-A'la from 'Awf, who says he saw it (35199; al-Hut 32989), in the chapter 'What they said about demolishing churches, synagogues and fire-temples'. The editor gives no grading, and none was found. Two other reports in the chapter frame it: Ibn 'Abbas says that in a city the Arabs founded, non-Arabs may not put up a building or church (35192; the editor grades this one da'if jiddan, very weak, because its narrator Hanash is abandoned), and 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz writes that no church, synagogue or fire-temple covered by a treaty is to be demolished (35193). The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
The offence was building a place of worship. A Zoroastrian (Magian) put up a fire-temple in Basra, and the man in authority had him beheaded. Ibn Abi Shayba records it without comment, in a chapter devoted to when the places of worship of protected non-Muslims may be torn down.
The chapter shows the system behind the act. Existing temples covered by a treaty were protected; new ones in cities the Arabs had founded were not allowed. The report mentions no demolition and no fine, only the execution.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The standard answer is that this is one official's act, reported without a grading, and not a ruling of the Prophet or the law. The same chapter records 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz forbidding the demolition of treaty-protected temples, which shows that Islamic law protected the worship of the People of the Covenant.
Why it fails
It is fair that this is one official's act, and this entry does not call it a rule of law. But 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz's letter protects only the temples a treaty already covered. The rule attributed to Ibn 'Abbas, in a chain the editor calls very weak, forbids new ones in Arab cities, and al-Hasan says the treaties left them their fires and idols only outside the garrison cities (35196). The Magian was punished under the side of the system that the defence leaves out.
Ibn Abi Shayba kept this as a precedent in a legal collection, in the very chapter on the places of worship of non-Muslims, with no word of disapproval. The tradition's record of how that rule was enforced includes a beheading for building a temple.
Check it yourself
"It is a branch of the deed of the people of Lot, meaning the enema."
What the hadith says
This is the opinion of Mujahid, a Successor, not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it through 'Abd Allah b. Numayr and 'Uthman b. al-Aswad (24993; al-Hut 23449) in the chapter 'The enema: those who disliked it'. The same chapter has Ibrahim al-Nakha'i saying 'I find it obscene' (24990) and a weak report that 'Ali disliked it (24992); the next chapter lists those who allowed it, including Ibrahim, 'There is no harm in it' (24995). The editor gives no grading for Mujahid's saying. The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
Mujahid, the leading student of Ibn 'Abbas in Qur'an commentary, classed a medical treatment with the sin of the people of Lot. He gives no reason; the evident link, on our reading, is that the enema is applied through the anus, and nothing in his words concerns harm or a sexual act. On that reading a remedy becomes a 'branch' of a grave sin because of where it is applied.
The reasoning shows how a sexual taboo spread into medicine. None of the objections recorded in the chapter mentions the enema's effects: Mujahid ties it to the people of Lot and al-Nakha'i calls it obscene. Ibn Abi Shayba needed two chapters to record the disagreement.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that this is one Successor's opinion that the law did not follow. IslamQA 20671 says that 'it is permissible to use an enema as a medical treatment' if prescribed by a competent doctor, and that Imam Ahmad himself used one when advised to.
Why it fails
The answer is right, and this entry is rated Basic. Later law permitted the enema, and the report binds no one.
What it preserves is a revealing step in early reasoning: an authority on the Qur'an linking a medical procedure to sodomy, apparently by anatomy alone, and a collection recording the dispute as a live question among the early jurists.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 24993, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 13 p. 114
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 23449, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 5 p. 34
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 24990, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 13 p. 113
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 24992, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 13 p. 114 ('Ali, editor: da'if)
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 24995, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 13 p. 114
"There is no harm; it is necessity."
What the hadith says
This is a ruling of 'Ata' b. Abi Rabah, a Successor and the leading jurist of Mecca, not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it through Makhlad b. Yazid ('he was trustworthy') and Ibn Jurayj, in a chapter titled 'One for whom drinking his own blood is prescribed' (25263; al-Hut 23712). 'Ata' was asked about a man with a pain in his liver who had been advised to cut over his liver and drink some of his blood. He said: 'There is no harm; it is necessity.' Ibn Jurayj objected: 'Is blood not forbidden?' He answered: 'That is from necessity.' The editor glosses the verb as 'cut'; manuscripts read it differently. No grading is given. The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
The Qur'an forbids blood by name. Asked about a folk remedy, cutting the skin over the liver and drinking the blood that comes out, the jurist of Mecca allowed it, and when his student reminded him that blood is forbidden he repeated that it was necessity.
The principle of necessity exists for real emergencies, such as starvation. Here it was applied to a cure that someone had merely recommended, with no question about whether it worked. Ibn Abi Shayba gave the case its own chapter heading.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that necessity really does make the forbidden lawful, and that this is the mainstream position, not an oddity. A Hanafi fatwa from Darul Iftaa (Leicester) quotes al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya: 'It is permissible for a (severely) sick person to drink blood and urine ... for the purpose of medication if an experienced Muslim medical expert stipulates that this is the only cure, and that one does not find an alternative.'
Why it fails
The response confirms that the principle behind 'Ata's ruling survives in later law, with conditions. The later conditions, an expert's word that it is the only cure, are not in 'Ata's answer; he asked nothing about the remedy and gave permission at once.
The report is a curiosity, and this entry is rated Basic. It shows a leading early jurist allowing a man to cut himself and drink his own blood on the strength of a recommendation, a remedy no physician would now prescribe.
Check it yourself
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 25263, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 13 p. 211
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba 23712, al-Hut ed. (Maktabat al-Rushd), different numbering, vol. 5 p. 62
- Musannaf Ibn Abi Shayba chapter heading, al-Shathri ed. (Dar Kunuz Ishbiliya), vol. 13 p. 211
- Darul Iftaa (Mufti Muhammad ibn Adam, Leicester), 'Blood transfusion & donation', quoting al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya 5/355 (islamqa.org mirror)
"Woe to the Arabs from an evil that has drawn near: the rule of boys. If they obey them, they will bring them into the Fire, and if they disobey them, they will strike their necks."
What the hadith says
These are Abu Hurayra's own words, not presented as the Prophet's. Ibn Abi Shayba records them in his book of tribulations through Ghundar, Shu'ba, Simak and Abu al-Rabi' (40019; al-Hut 37236). The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it hasan (good): Simak and Abu al-Rabi' al-Madini are both 'truthful'. Two parts of it have canonical echoes. 'Woe to the Arabs from an evil that has drawn near' are words the Prophet says in Bukhari 3346, and Abu Hurayra reports from the Prophet that 'the destruction of my followers will be through the hands of young men from Quraysh' (Bukhari 7058). The dilemma of obeying into the Fire or disobeying unto death is not in the six books.
Why this is a problem
Abu Hurayra describes a coming government with no good choice: obeying the rulers leads to Hell, and disobeying them leads to execution. The believer is caught between damnation and death, and the saying gives no way out.
It also shows how prophetic phrases were reused. A canonical opening line about Gog and Magog becomes the opening of a Companion's political warning about young rulers. A reader who meets the words 'Woe to the Arabs from an evil that has drawn near' cannot tell from the words alone whose they are.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The standard answer is that this is a Companion's warning about unjust rulers, consistent with the Prophet's own warning about the young men of Quraysh. The Prophet taught that 'if an act of disobedience (to Allah) is imposed one should not listen to it or obey it' (Bukhari 7144), so a Muslim faced with such rulers should refuse sin and bear the consequences.
Why it fails
The answer fits the text, and this entry is rated Basic. The saying is a political warning, and its grim choice is the one the response accepts: refuse, and be killed.
The point worth noting is the borrowed wording. A good chain carries a Companion's words that begin with the Prophet's, and only the chain tells the reader that this part is Abu Hurayra's.
Check it yourself
"He would not pass a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian without greeting him first."
What the hadith says
This describes the practice of the Companion Abu Umama al-Bahili. Ibn Abi Shayba records it through Isma'il b. 'Ayyash, Muhammad b. Ziyad al-Alhani and Shurahbil b. Muslim (27411) in the chapter 'The People of the Covenant (ahl al-dhimma): are they greeted first?' The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it hasan (Isma'il is 'truthful') and notes that al-Tabarani, Ibn 'Asakir and al-Bayhaqi also record it. The next report says that 'Abd Allah (presumably Ibn Mas'ud), Abu al-Darda' and Fadala b. 'Ubayd used to greet the polytheists first (27412; al-Hut 25752); its chain is broken, the editor says, since Ibn 'Ajlan does not narrate from them. Abu Umama's report was not found in the al-Hut edition. Against them stands the Prophet's command in Muslim: 'Do not greet the Jews and the Christians before they greet you, and when you meet any one of them on the road, force him to the narrowest part of it' (Muslim 2167).
Why this is a problem
Either the Prophet commanded Muslims not to greet Jews and Christians first, or he did not. Muslim's collection says he did, and added that they should be pushed to the narrowest part of the road. Abu Umama, a Companion, did the opposite as a habit, greeting every Jew and Christian he passed, and the report of his practice is graded good. A report with a broken chain says others greeted the polytheists first.
If the command was known and binding, a Companion ignored it as a matter of routine. If he did not know it, a rule that now governs Muslims' daily dealings with their neighbours was unknown to men who lived with the Prophet.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that the scholars differ on this question. IslamQA 48966 holds that 'initiating a greeting to a non-Muslim is prohibited', but quotes Ibn al-Qayyim that 'a group of scholars said: It is permissible to greet him first if that serves a purpose', or for fear of harm, or because of family ties. On this view Abu Umama and the others followed a recognised position, perhaps for a reason the report does not give.
Why it fails
The disagreement among scholars is real, and this entry is rated Basic. But IslamQA's exceptions require a purpose, a fear or a family tie. Abu Umama's practice, as reported, had no condition: he greeted every Jew and Christian he passed.
The kinder practice reflects well on him. The problem is for the command: a Companion's settled habit runs directly against a prohibition preserved in Muslim, and the prevailing later view, as IslamQA gives it, sides with the prohibition and allows exceptions only for a purpose, a fear or a family tie.
Check it yourself
"Do not leave the Jews and the Christians in Medina beyond three days, as long as it takes them to sell their goods."
What the hadith says
This is 'Umar's own order, reported by his son Ibn 'Umar through Nafi'; it is not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it through 'Abda b. Sulayman and 'Ubayd Allah (35202; al-Hut 32992), in the chapter 'Those who said Jews and Christians may not live together with Muslims in a city'. 'Umar adds: 'Two religions shall not come together in the Arabian Peninsula.' The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih. The next report has Ibn 'Abbas saying 'Do not live alongside the Jews and Christians unless they become Muslims' (35203), which the editor grades da'if. The expulsion itself is canonical: the Prophet says 'I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslims' (Muslim 1767). The three-day limit is not in the six books.
Why this is a problem
The canonical texts state the goal; this sound report shows how it was enforced. Jews and Christians could come to Medina as traders, but only for three days, long enough to sell, and then they had to leave. Their presence was tolerated as a commercial necessity, never as residence.
The rule is based on religion alone. It does not depend on what any Jew or Christian has done, only on what they believe, and 'Umar's accompanying statement gives the principle: two religions shall not come together in Arabia.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The standard answer is that this applies only to the Hijaz, the sacred heartland, by the Prophet's own instruction, and is not a rule for Muslim lands in general. Jews and Christians lived freely as protected communities across the rest of the Islamic world, and even in Medina they could come to trade.
Why it fails
The limit to Arabia is fair, and this entry claims nothing wider. But the defence admits the principle: in the region Muslims consider their holiest, Jews and Christians may not live, and in Medina 'Umar let them stay only three days, long enough to sell.
That is a religious exclusion, enforced by the second caliph with a time limit, from a sound chain. That it rests on a prophetic command makes it more authoritative, not less.
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"The Companions of the Messenger of God used to kill, of the women and children, whoever helped against them."
What the hadith says
This is al-Hasan al-Basri, a Successor, describing what the Companions did; it is not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records it through 'Ali b. Hashim and Isma'il (35351; al-Hut 33139) in the chapter 'Those who permitted killing children and old men'. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it da'if (weak): the Isma'il in the chain is Isma'il b. Muslim al-Makki, who is weak. The six canonical books do not contain it; they record the Prophet's answer about night raids in which women and children were hit: 'They are from them' (Bukhari 3012).
Why this is a problem
The general rule forbids killing women and children in war. This report describes the Companions' practice as an exception that goes beyond women who fight: those who 'helped against them'. The Arabic, a'ana, is wider than fighting, and the report applies it to children as well as women.
Ibn Abi Shayba placed it in a chapter whose title is about those who 'permitted' killing children and old men, so the collector filed it as a permission.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that the chain is weak, and that the prohibition on killing women and children is firm. As SeekersGuidance (Jamir Meah) explains, scholars agree on the prohibition; the night-raid hadith concerns unintended deaths, and Ibn Hajar says it 'does not mean that it is permissible to kill them deliberately'. The exception is narrow: quoting al-Nawawi, 'if they are involved in the fighting, then the majority of scholars said that they may be killed'.
Why it fails
The weak chain is a fair objection, and this entry is rated Basic. The report cannot show what the Companions actually did.
But the response describes an exception for those 'involved in the fighting', while this report, and the chapter that holds it, speak of those who 'helped' and of 'permitting' the killing of children. That the tradition transmitted the wider version as precedent shows how far the exception could be stretched.
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"God has angels, extra ones besides His creation, who write down what falls of the leaves of the trees; so when one of you is struck by a lameness on a journey, let him call out: 'Help, O servants of God, may God have mercy on you.'"
What the hadith says
These are Ibn 'Abbas's own words. Ibn Abi Shayba records them through Abu Khalid al-Ahmar, Usama, Aban b. Salih and Mujahid (31703; al-Hut 29721), in the chapter 'What a man says in prayer when something of his goes astray'. The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it mawquf hasan: a good chain, stopping at Ibn 'Abbas. Where al-Shathri prints 'besides His creation', one manuscript reads 'besides the recording angels'. The word translated 'lameness' ('arja) describes being halted or disabled on the road. The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
The Qur'an teaches Muslims to say to God, 'You alone we ask for help' (1:5). Here a leading Companion tells the stranded traveller to call out to unseen 'servants of God', a class of angels who record falling leaves, and ask them for help.
Muslims have argued about this practice ever since. Some use it to justify calling on beings other than God for help; others deny that it does. A report from Ibn 'Abbas with a chain the editor grades good (hasan) is at the centre of that argument.
The Muslim response
Muslims answer that this is not calling on other than God in the forbidden sense. IslamQA 181206 concludes that the version attributed to the Prophet is weak and the version from Ibn 'Abbas is 'more likely to be sound', and argues that seeking help from created beings in matters they are able to do 'has nothing to do with shirk at all', provided the helper is alive, present and able. The angels in the report are present and able, so the report gives no support for asking the dead or absent for help.
Why it fails
The answer is coherent, and this entry is rated Basic. But it depends on knowing that unseen beings are present and able to help, which the traveller cannot see or check; he calls out to the empty desert on Ibn 'Abbas's word.
The distinction between 'present unseen angels' and other unseen helpers is drawn by later theology, not by the report. The need for that careful distinction shows how close this well-attested saying comes to a practice the same scholars condemn.
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"He was created from the passage of urine, from a stench."
What the hadith says
These are Abu Bakr's words from his sermons, reported by Anas b. Malik; they are not a saying of the Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba records them through Yazid b. Harun, Hammad b. Salama and Thabit, in the chapter 'Sayings of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq' (37155; al-Hut 34436). Anas says: 'Abu Bakr used to preach to us, and mention the beginning of the creation of man, and say: He was created from the passage of urine, from a stench. And he would go on about it until each of us felt disgust at himself.' The editor, Sa'd al-Shathri, grades it sahih and notes that Ibn Abi al-Dunya records it in his book on humility. The six canonical books do not contain it.
Why this is a problem
The first caliph's preaching on human origins ended in disgust. Man came out of the passage of urine, out of a stench, and the sermon was not finished until the listeners loathed themselves. In Anas's account, self-disgust is where the sermon led.
This is a minor item. It is not a claim about embryology, and the report is a sermon, not law. But it is sound, it is the first caliph's, and it shows a strand of early piety that taught believers to regard their own bodies with revulsion.
The Muslim response
No published Muslim answer to this report was found. The standard answer is that this is a sermon on humility, drawn from the Qur'an's own language: 'Did We not create you from a despised water?' (77:20). Reminding people of their lowly origin is meant to break pride, not to teach hatred of the body, and Ibn Abi al-Dunya filed it under humility.
Why it fails
That answer is largely right, and this entry is rated Basic. Abu Bakr was preaching humility, using the Qur'an's own image.
What the report adds is the method and the result. Anas does not say the sermons made them humble; he says they made each of them disgusted with himself. Ibn Abi Shayba preserved that as an example of Abu Bakr's speech.
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