Musnad Ahmad

Compiled by Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. AD 855), founder of the Hanbali school. One of the largest early collections, arranged by Companion. Numbers follow the al-Risala edition (al-Arna'ut et al.). Not one of the six canonical books. Many reports here are graded weak; each entry names its grading and links the printed edition so you can check it.

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Naked figures 'like the Zutt' mount Muhammad, who comes back 'heavy and in pain' Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Magic & Occult Moderate Musnad Ahmad 3788
"They came and began to mount the Messenger of Allah, and the Prophet of Allah began reciting to them ... Then the Messenger of Allah came, heavy and in pain, or nearly in pain, from what they had mounted [him]."

What the hadith says

Abdullah b. Mas'ud says the Prophet took him out one night, drew a line round him, told him he would perish if he stepped outside it, and went off about a stone's throw away. Then some figures came. The text calls them hanin, a vague word that the commentators take as a veiled term for 'persons'. They were 'as though they were the Zutt', a dark-skinned people from Sind or India according to the lexicographers. They were naked, 'yet I do not see their private parts', tall, with little flesh on them. 'They came and began to mount (yarkabun) the Messenger of Allah' while he recited to them. They circled Ibn Mas'ud until he sat down in terror, and they left when dawn broke. Muhammad came back 'heavy and in pain, or nearly in pain, from what they had mounted [him]', said 'I find myself heavy', and laid his head in Ibn Mas'ud's lap. A second group in long white clothes then struck a parable over him while he dozed, and he said these were 'a band of the angels'. The report is Musnad Ahmad 3788. The number is the same in the al-Risala and Ahmad Shakir editions, and both print the mounting lines word for word. The two editors grade the same chain differently. Ahmad Shakir says isnaduhu sahih (sound chain), because he counts Amr al-Bikali as a Companion. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut says isnaduhu da'if (weak chain), because al-Bikali is not shown to have heard it from Ibn Mas'ud. Al-Arna'ut's note also quotes Ibn Kathir, who says the report contains 'severe strangeness', and Abu Zur'a and Abu Hatim, who held that nothing in this chapter is sound.

Why this is a problem

Read literally, the text has a prophet physically burdened through a night. Naked beings of unstated kind climb on or press on him while he recites, and he comes back so burdened that he is heavy and in pain and has to lie down. The angels' parable that follows ends with a threat: whoever does not follow 'the caller' will be severely punished. This is not a later legend from a fringe source. It sits in the Musnad of Ahmad b. Hanbal, and Ahmad Shakir, one of the leading modern editors of the Musnad, graded its chain sound. A grading system that can pass such a story as sahih on one editor's reading of a single narrator is a weak guarantee of what the Prophet actually experienced.

The frame of the story also conflicts with the canonical sources. Tirmidhi 2861 (al-Tirmidhi: hasan sahih gharib; Darussalam: da'if) keeps the encounter: Ibn Mas'ud sits inside the line, men 'as though they were the Zutt' approach, and the Prophet sleeps on his thigh while the angels give their parable. In Sahih Muslim 450, however, Ibn Mas'ud says that none of them was with the Prophet on the Night of the Jinn: 'I was not with the Messenger of Allah on the Night of the Jinn, and I wish I had been.' Al-Arna'ut uses Muslim's report against the Musnad version, while al-Bayhaqi and Ibn Kathir try to reconcile the two: Ibn Mas'ud stood far off, or there was a second night. Muslim scholars therefore disagree over whether the only eyewitness was even there. (The popular claim that the beings 'had sex with' Muhammad is not in the text. The verb is rakiba, 'to mount or ride'. The beings are only like the Zutt, and Ibn Mas'ud says he could not see their private parts.)

The Muslim response

Muslim writers answer that yarkabun here means crowding. Al-Sindi's gloss, printed in the al-Risala note, explains it as 'they crowd him and draw close to him'. In al-Tabari's commentary on Q 72:19, early authorities use the same verb for the jinn who 'almost mounted' the Prophet out of eagerness to hear the Qur'an. The parallel versions in Tirmidhi and al-Darimi 12 have no mounting at all: the beings simply 'go back to' the Prophet. The Musnad chain is weak (al-Arna'ut), and Muslim 450 is preferred over it. Waqar Akbar Cheema sets out this case in 'When Eagerness Crowds In: A Misread Hadith Explained'.

Why it fails

On the sexual reading the Muslim response is right, and this entry does not make that claim. But the crowding gloss does not remove the problem. In the text the crowd does what al-Tabari's jinn only 'almost' did, and it leaves the Prophet 'heavy and in pain'. Al-Sindi's gloss does not explain away that line, which stands in both printed editions. The weak-chain answer also depends on which editor one follows. Al-Arna'ut rejects the chain, but Shakir graded it sahih after examining the same narrator, and the Musnad transmitted it either way.

Appealing to Muslim 450 does not close the matter either, because it sets one canonical report against another. Tirmidhi 2861 places Ibn Mas'ud at the scene, and Muslim 450 has him deny that he was there. The classical harmonisations (he stood at a distance, or it was another night) are guesses made to save both reports. The honest conclusion is narrower than the internet meme but still damaging. A major collection preserved, and a leading editor authenticated, a story in which unidentified naked beings mount the Prophet and leave him in pain. Ibn Kathir found the story 'severely strange', and its eyewitness frame is disputed by Sahih Muslim itself.

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Muhammad sucks the tongue (or lip) of the child al-Hasan Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Gross / Vile Basic Musnad Ahmad 16848
"I saw the Messenger of Allah sucking his tongue, or he said, his lip (meaning al-Hasan b. Ali), and a tongue or two lips that the Messenger of Allah sucked will never be punished."

What the hadith says

Mu'awiya b. Abi Sufyan reports that he saw the Prophet sucking (yamussu) the tongue of his grandson al-Hasan b. Ali. The narrator was unsure whether it was the tongue or the lip and gives both. He then draws a theological conclusion: a tongue or lips that the Messenger of Allah sucked will never be punished. Al-Hasan was then a small child. The report is Musnad Ahmad 16848. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu sahih (sound chain), and al-Haythami says its narrators are those of the Sahih apart from Abd al-Rahman b. Abi Awf, who is reliable. A related report in al-Tabarani's al-Mu'jam al-Kabir 2656 runs the other way: on a journey, al-Hasan and al-Husayn cry from thirst, and the Prophet puts out his tongue for each child to suck until he calms down.

Why this is a problem

The problem is not that the report is sexual, because it is not. It is that the tradition records, with a chain its editors call sound, mouth-to-mouth contact between an adult and a small child that many modern readers find inappropriate, and then turns it into a promise about salvation. The point of the closing line is that the child's tongue is guaranteed against punishment because the Prophet's mouth touched it. That is a magical idea: holiness passes by bodily contact.

Because Muhammad is held up as the model of conduct for every age, the report cannot simply be filed under 'customs of the time'. Either this conduct is part of the exemplary Sunna, or the Sunna contains behaviour that Muslims themselves would not want imitated, and then it needs a principle for deciding which recorded acts of the Prophet are meant to be followed.

The Muslim response

Muslims read this as tenderness towards a grandchild in a culture where soothing infants by mouth was normal. The Tabarani report shows the setting: thirsty small children on a journey with no water, calmed by sucking moisture from the Prophet's tongue. The classical scholars who record the hadith, such as al-Haythami as quoted by al-Arna'ut, treat it as one of al-Hasan's merits (fada'il), and Sunnis value it as Mu'awiya's own testimony to the virtue of Ali's son.

Why it fails

The Tabarani report does not explain Ahmad 16848. In Tabarani the child sucks the Prophet's tongue to relieve thirst. In Ahmad the Prophet sucks the child's tongue or lip, with no thirst and no emergency, and the act is given eternal significance. The response is fair that nothing sexual is implied, and this entry claims nothing of the kind. Its weakness lies elsewhere. It explains the behaviour by culture while still keeping the act as a sanctified precedent, and it does not address the closing claim that physical contact with the Prophet's mouth exempts a body part from divine punishment. That is the part that marks the report as folk piety, and its editors still graded the chain sound.

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Even licking her husband's pus would not discharge a wife's duty Women Gross / Vile Animals Basic Musnad Ahmad 12614
"By Him in whose hand is my soul, if from his foot to the parting of his hair he were one ulcer gushing with pus and bloody matter, and she then turned to him and licked it, she would not have discharged his right."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik tells how an irrigation camel belonging to a Medinan family turned vicious. When it saw the Prophet it prostrated before him, and he led it back to work. The Companions said that if a dumb beast prostrates to him, they have a better right to do so. He replied that no human may prostrate to another human, but if it were allowed, 'I would command a woman to prostrate to her husband because of the greatness of his right over her.' He then adds an oath: if the husband were a single ulcer from foot to scalp, gushing pus and bloody matter, and she licked it, she still would not have discharged his right. The report is Musnad Ahmad 12614. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades the hadith sahih li-ghayrihi (sound through corroboration) except the pus sentence. He says only Husayn al-Marrudhi narrates it from Khalaf b. Khalifa, whose memory deteriorated before his death, so on its own that sentence is weak. Al-Albani, however, lists the full wording, pus clause included, as sahih (Sahih al-Jami' 7725).

Why this is a problem

The prostration saying is already canonical (Tirmidhi 1159; Mu'adh's report in Ibn Majah 1853), and it is treated elsewhere on this site. What the Musnad adds is the measure of that duty. A wife's obligation to her husband is so great that licking pus from a body covered in sores would not pay it off. No matching duty of the husband is stated. The image is not just hyperbole about kindness. It puts a husband's 'right' above a wife's bodily dignity and makes even revolting self-abasement fall short.

The grading is the second problem. One major modern hadith scholar (al-Albani) declares the whole wording, pus clause included, authentic, while another (al-Arna'ut) cuts out that very clause as a narrator's lapse of memory. A believer told that a wife's duty is defined by the Sunna cannot tell from the grading system whether this sentence is part of it.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the pus clause is weak by the Musnad's own editors, so nothing in Islamic law rests on it. The sound core is a hypothetical ('if it were allowed') whose point is that prostration belongs to God alone. Its mention of the wife is hyperbole stressing the importance of the marital bond, and other texts balance it with the husband's duties to her. Al-Arna'ut's note also points out that another student of Khalaf, Muhammad b. Mu'awiya, narrates the hadith without the clause.

Why it fails

Most of this response is fair. The clause is weak on al-Arna'ut's analysis, and this entry does not claim it binds anyone. But two points remain. First, the 'weak' verdict is not the consensus. Al-Albani, the most influential hadith grader of the last century, included the full wording in his Sahih al-Jami', so for a large part of the modern Salafi readership this sentence is the Prophet's word. Second, the sound core makes the same point in milder form. Even the canonical version says that, if prostration to a human were ever allowed, the wife is the one who would be told to bow to her husband. The pus clause only takes that hierarchy to its logical extreme. The tradition preserved the clause, and one of its leading graders accepted it.

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The sun was held back for no human except Joshua Contradictions Science Scripture Integrity Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad Ahmad 8315
"The sun has never been held back for any human except for Joshua, on the nights he marched to Bayt al-Maqdis."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports Muhammad saying that the sun has never been held back for any human except Joshua (Yusha'), on the nights he marched to Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis). The report is Musnad Ahmad 8315. The canonical version (Bukhari 3124, Muslim 1747) tells how an unnamed 'prophet among the prophets' prayed 'O Allah, hold it back for us' during a raid, and the sun was held back. The canonical versions do not name Joshua or say 'never for any human except him'; that prophetic wording comes through the non-canonical route that Ahmad transmits. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades the chain sahih on al-Bukhari's criteria. Ibn Kathir says it meets al-Bukhari's criteria, and Ibn Hajar calls it 'a sound route going back to the Prophet, transmitted by Ahmad'. Al-Arna'ut's note also records that some transmissions read 'not held back, or not returned', and that Imam Ahmad counted this as inconsistency (idtirab) on the part of the narrator Abu Bakr b. Ayyash.

Why this is a problem

The first problem is cosmological. The sun cannot be 'held back' without stopping the earth's rotation, and the hadith treats as a literal event what the Bible places in a battle, quoting a poem from the Book of Jashar (Joshua 10:12-14, at Gibeon, not on the march to Jerusalem). Ibn Kathir himself has to reconcile the hadith's Jerusalem with the Jericho of the People of the Book and the historians.

The sharper problem is internal. The hadith makes Joshua unique: 'never for any human except him'. Yet Sunni literature also carries reports of the sun being delayed for Muhammad and turned back so that Ali could pray the afternoon prayer. Two of the most authoritative later Sunni scholars split over this. Ibn Kathir says the hadith shows the miracle was peculiar to Joshua, which 'indicates the weakness' of the Ali report, and he calls that report munkar (objectionable). Ibn Hajar first states that 'the reliable view is that it was held back only for Joshua'. He then accepts a report in al-Tabarani's Awsat that the sun was delayed for Muhammad, calling its chain hasan. He limits the restriction to 'the prophets before our Prophet', and on the next page he says Ibn al-Jawzi and Ibn Taymiyya were wrong to call the Ali report fabricated. A sound hadith whose words are 'never for any human' has been narrowed to mean 'never for any earlier prophet' in order to save other miracle stories.

The Muslim response

Muslims reply that God, who made the sun, can stop it, so the cosmological objection only assumes miracles are impossible. On the internal question they follow Ibn Hajar's harmonisation: the restriction refers to prophets before Muhammad and says nothing about what God did afterwards, so there is no contradiction. Besides, the hadith's own wording is uncertain ('held back' or 'returned'), as Imam Ahmad noted, so it should not carry much weight.

Why it fails

The appeal to omnipotence answers whether God could do it, not whether the report is true. The canonical sources do not support Joshua's name or the exclusivity clause, and those details come only through this non-canonical route (Ahmad's chain, also transmitted by al-Tahawi and al-Khatib). The harmonisation is the weaker point. 'Never for any human except Joshua' does not mean 'never for any earlier prophet'. Ibn Hajar's reading adds a limit the text does not contain, and Ibn Kathir, reading the same hadith, refused to add it and used the hadith to reject the Ali miracle instead. When two leading Sunni scholars draw opposite conclusions from one sound hadith about whether another miracle happened, the hadith corpus is not giving a clear account. And the uncertainty about the wording works against the response, not for it. If a chain graded sahih on al-Bukhari's criteria cannot settle whether the Prophet said 'held back' or 'returned', the grade does not secure the exact words.

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The people of Paradise: sixty cubits tall and seven wide, beardless, aged thirty-three Paradise Science Basic Musnad Ahmad 7933
"The people of Paradise will enter Paradise hairless of body, beardless, white, curly-haired, kohl-eyed, aged thirty-three, in the form of Adam: sixty cubits [tall] by seven cubits in width."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports the Prophet describing the bodies of those who enter Paradise. They have no body hair and no beards, they are white, curly-haired, with kohl-lined eyes, all aged thirty-three, and they have Adam's form, which the report measures as sixty cubits tall by seven cubits wide (roughly 30 by 3.5 metres). The report is Musnad Ahmad 7933. Parts of it are canonical. Tirmidhi 2545 (from Mu'adh b. Jabal) has 'hairless, beardless, kohl-eyed, aged thirty or thirty-three', and Bukhari 3326 and Muslim 2841 give Adam's height as sixty cubits, a claim treated elsewhere on this site. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades Ahmad's hadith hasan by its routes and supporting witnesses, except the words 'seven cubits in width'. He says only Ali b. Zayd b. Jud'an narrates those words, and Ali b. Zayd is weak.

Why this is a problem

The Musnad joins the canonical pieces into one picture, and the result shows how literal the tradition's Paradise is. Its inhabitants have measured bodies, a single fixed age, a single hair type and a single skin colour ('white'), with cosmetic kohl already applied. The added width turns an abstract 'sixty cubits' into a body plan. A human scaled to thirty metres would face the square-cube problem: weight grows with volume while bone strength grows only with cross-section, so such a body could not stand. The canonical sixty-cubit Adam already faces that objection.

The uniform features also reflect a particular culture's ideal of beauty. 'Beardless', 'white', 'curly-haired' and 'kohl-eyed' look like the preferences of seventh-century Arabia, not a description of a transcendent state, and the canonical Tirmidhi version keeps two of them, 'beardless' and 'kohl-eyed'.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the one detail that is most open to ridicule, the seven-cubit width, is weak by al-Arna'ut's own grading, so no one is obliged to believe it. The rest concerns the unseen. Paradise bodies are created anew and are not bound by earthly biology, so arguments from bone strength do not apply. Features such as eternal youth and adornment express perfection in terms the first hearers would understand.

Why it fails

The response is right about the width clause. It rests on a weak narrator, and this entry is filed as Basic for that reason. What it cannot remove is the rest of the report, which al-Arna'ut grades hasan and Tirmidhi preserves independently. The appeal to 'the unseen' also works against the response. If Paradise bodies follow no earthly rules, nothing is gained by giving them exact cubit measurements, a single age and a skin colour. Precise physical description is what makes them earthly. The report's value is what it shows about the tradition: a Paradise built to the specifications of one time and place, with a weak narrator's measurement of its width kept in the Musnad alongside the sound material.

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'Make him bite his father's penis, and do not use a euphemism' Prophetic Character Moral Problems Gross / Vile Moderate Musnad Ahmad 21234
"Whoever calls out with the rallying cry of the Jahiliyya, make him bite [his father's member], and do not speak in euphemism."

What the hadith says

Ubayy b. Ka'b reports the Prophet's instruction for dealing with anyone who raises the tribal battle-cry of the pre-Islamic era ('aza' al-jahiliyya), calling on his clan against others: 'make him bite, and do not use a euphemism' (Musnad Ahmad 21233, 21234). In 21236 Ubayy spells out the object: 'We used to be commanded: when a man calls out with the cry of the Jahiliyya, make him bite his father's member (bi-hani abihi), and do not use a euphemism.' In 21218 Ubayy does exactly this to a man. When the onlookers say, 'You were never foul-mouthed,' he replies, 'We were commanded to do this.' Han is itself a veiled word, and the commentators state the plain meaning: al-Arna'ut's note on 21218 explains a'addahu as 'he said to him: bite your father's penis'. Al-Arna'ut grades 21233-21236 each hasan and 21218 isnaduhu hasan, and al-Albani grades the version in al-Adab al-Mufrad 963 sahih (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 269).

Why this is a problem

This is not a curse let slip in anger. It is a standing instruction. Muslims are told to answer a certain kind of speech with an explicit genital insult aimed at the speaker's father, and they are forbidden to soften it. Ubayy's contemporaries were shocked ('you were never foul-mouthed'), and his defence was obedience, not context. Both al-Arna'ut and al-Albani grade the command acceptable.

That sits badly with the image of Muhammad as the perfect model of manners. Ubayy's own audience saw the act as foul-mouthed, and a command to be obscene, with euphemism explicitly forbidden, needs explaining. It also shows that the law's concern is to defend Muslim identity against tribal loyalty, and that it chose public humiliation, aimed at a man's father, as its tool.

The Muslim response

Muslims explain the command as a deliberate shock tactic against tribal chauvinism, which Islam treats as a grave evil because it divides the community and leads to bloodshed. The footnote in al-Albani's edition of al-Adab al-Mufrad explains it as 'insult him explicitly and abuse him': the man who boasts of his ancestors is reminded, in the crudest terms, where his ancestors came from. The shock is the point. The rule applies only to the specific act of calling to Jahiliyya partisanship, not to ordinary disputes.

Why it fails

The explanation describes what the command does. It does not show that the command is good. 'The shock is the point' concedes that the Prophet chose obscenity as the remedy and banned euphemism so the obscenity would not be softened. Other methods were available, such as rebuke, argument or refusal to answer, and Ubayy's hearers plainly expected better of him. Limiting the command to one offence does not help either. It makes humiliation by obscenity an approved, permanent response to a category of speech. The Muslim response does not dispute the text or its grading, so this report stands as authentic in the eyes of both al-Arna'ut and al-Albani.

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Khadija gets her father drunk to marry Muhammad Prophetic Character Women Contradictions Basic Musnad Ahmad 2849
"They ate and drank until they were drunk ... When his drunkenness lifted ... he said, 'I marry [my daughter to] Abu Talib's orphan? No, by my life!'"

What the hadith says

In this report, attributed to Ibn Abbas 'as far as Hammad thinks', Khadija's father is unwilling to marry her to Muhammad. So she prepares food and drink and invites him with a group of Quraysh. They eat and drink until they are drunk, she asks her father to marry her to Muhammad, and he does. When he sobers up and finds himself perfumed and robed for a wedding, he protests: 'I marry [my daughter to] Abu Talib's orphan? No, by my life!' Khadija shames him into accepting by asking whether he wants to tell Quraysh he had been drunk. The report is Musnad Ahmad 2849, with a shorter repeat at 2850. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades both isnaduhu da'if (weak chain). The transmitter Hammad b. Salama himself doubted the link to Ibn Abbas, and another route shows that the story really goes back to Ali b. Zayd b. Jud'an, who is weak.

Why this is a problem

The story sets the most celebrated marriage in Islamic history in a drinking party. A guardian's consent is obtained by getting him drunk, and when he sobers up and objects, his consent is enforced by shaming him. By the Islamic law later attributed to Muhammad, a marriage contracted by an intoxicated guardian against his sober will would be a scandal, not a love story. And Muhammad is the groom.

Its sources are the deeper problem. This version circulated in the Musnad, one of Sunni Islam's central hadith collections, while the early historians gave other accounts. As quoted in al-Arna'ut's note, al-Waqidi (via Ibn Sa'd) says Khadija's father Khuwaylid had died before the Fijar war and that her uncle Amr b. Asad gave her in marriage. So the tradition does not agree on something as basic as who gave the Prophet's first wife in marriage.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is weak and historically wrong. Al-Arna'ut grades the chain weak, and al-Waqidi, quoted by Ibn Sa'd, rejects the whole story outright: 'all of this is, in our view, a mistake and an error'. What the scholars established is that Khuwaylid died before the Fijar and that Khadija's uncle Amr b. Asad married her to the Prophet. The same correction is recorded in Tadmuri's note to al-Dhahabi's Tarikh al-Islam.

Why it fails

On the facts, the response is right. The report is weak, and the mainstream historical view rejects it. This entry does not claim the event happened. Its point is about the tradition. A story this embarrassing was put into circulation, attached to Ibn Abbas, and preserved in the Musnad of Ahmad b. Hanbal. Al-Waqidi had to argue against it, which shows it was being told. The weak-chain answer protects the marriage, but it also shows how freely stories about the Prophet's private life could be made up and attributed to his Companions. The only way to sort them is the same isnad criticism that, elsewhere, Muslims are asked to trust as decisive.

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Boy vomits something like a black puppy after Muhammad's exorcism Magic & Occult Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Animals Basic Musnad Ahmad 2133
"The Messenger of Allah wiped his chest and prayed for him, and he vomited, and something like a black puppy came out of his mouth, and he was cured."

What the hadith says

Ibn Abbas reports that a woman brought her son to the Prophet, saying he had a touch of madness (lamam) that seized him at mealtimes and spoiled their food. Muhammad wiped the boy's chest and prayed for him. The boy vomited, 'something like a black puppy' came out of his mouth, and he was cured. The report is Musnad Ahmad 2133. Sunan al-Darimi 19 has the same story with small differences: the boy has 'madness' (junun), and the thing like a black puppy comes 'out of his belly' and runs off. The chain is weak in both collections because of the narrator Farqad al-Sabakhi. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades Ahmad's report isnaduhu da'if, and Husayn Asad grades al-Darimi's isnaduhu da'if because of Farqad.

Why this is a problem

The report treats a childhood disorder that comes and goes (fits that strike at mealtimes) as possession by a creature that can be expelled bodily and that looks like a black dog. The details belong to folk demonology: the evil leaves through the mouth, has an animal shape, and is black, a colour that elsewhere in the hadith is linked with devils. Seizures and behavioural problems in children have medical explanations. A prophet's cure that works by vomiting out a demon-puppy confirms the folk explanation instead of correcting it.

The story is not confined to an obscure source. It was preserved in two major collections, the Musnad of Ahmad and the Sunan of al-Darimi, and al-Darimi files it in his chapter on how God honoured His Prophet through the faith of trees, beasts and jinn in him. The resemblance to the Gospel exorcisms, in which unclean spirits are driven out and visibly leave, is obvious, though the hadith gives the spirit a canine form.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is weak. Farqad al-Sabakhi was criticised by the early critics. Al-Arna'ut's note records al-Bukhari's remark that his hadith contains objectionable reports and Ahmad's that he is 'not strong'. Nothing in Islamic belief therefore depends on this story. Belief in the jinn and in healing through prayer rests on other evidence, and Muslims are not obliged to accept every miracle report that appears in a collection.

Why it fails

The response is correct that the report is weak, and this entry claims no more than that it was preserved. That is still the point. Two of the classical collections recorded, al-Darimi explicitly as an example of how God honoured His Prophet, a cure in which a demon-like puppy is vomited out of a child. The weak grade reflects the critics' verdict on Farqad. It does not change the fact that a transmitter such as Hammad b. Salama, and compilers such as Ahmad and al-Darimi, found the story worth passing on. It shows the world-view in which possession is a literal animal-shaped intruder, and the response accepts that world-view when it relies on 'other evidence' for the jinn and for healing through prayer.

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'By Him in whose hand is Muhammad's soul, I have come to you with slaughter' Warfare & Jihad Prophetic Character Disbelievers Moderate Musnad Ahmad 7036
"Do you hear, O assembly of Quraysh? By Him in whose hand is Muhammad's soul, I have come to you with slaughter."

What the hadith says

Urwa b. al-Zubayr asked Abdullah b. Amr b. al-As for the worst thing he had seen Quraysh do to the Prophet. He describes a day when the Qurayshi nobles gathered at the Kaaba, complaining that Muhammad had 'made fools of our minds, reviled our fathers, found fault with our religion, divided our community and insulted our gods'. As Muhammad walked round the Kaaba, they made jibes at him three times. On the third pass he turned and said: 'Do you hear, O assembly of Quraysh? By Him in whose hand is Muhammad's soul, I have come to you with slaughter (al-dhabh).' The words gripped them until every man stood as still 'as if a bird had landed on his head'. The report is Musnad Ahmad 7036, also in Sahih Ibn Hibban 6567. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades Ahmad's chain hasan, Ahmad Shakir sahih, and al-Albani hasan (Sahih al-Mawarid 1404).

Why this is a problem

The scene sets the provocation and the answer side by side. The nobles' complaint is that Muhammad mocked their minds, their fathers and their gods. Their response is verbal jibes. His answer is not an argument or a warning of divine judgement in the next life but an oath that he has come to them with slaughter, the word used for cutting the throat of an animal. The frightened silence that follows shows that the hearers took it as a threat of killing, and the narrator presents their fear as the Prophet's triumph.

The language has had a modern life of its own. A SeekersGuidance session took a question asking whether ISIS's actions are justified by this exact report. That use is a misuse, but it is possible because the words are in a well-graded hadith. A prophet who answers mockery with 'I have come to you with slaughter' gives a precedent that no amount of later context fully removes.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars read the threat as aimed at specific people. In the answer at IslamQA 135590, 'slaughter' refers to a few named leaders of Quraysh who kept fighting Islam and torturing Muslims such as Sumayya, Yasir and Bilal. The proof that it was not a general threat is that Muhammad later conquered Mecca and pardoned its people. In the scene itself he is the one being persecuted, and the words are a prophetic warning, not an order to his followers. SeekersGuidance addressed its use by ISIS under the title 'How ISIS Manipulates Hadith'.

Why it fails

The context the response gives is real, and this entry does not read the words as 'I will slaughter you all' or as an order. But the words are addressed to the 'assembly of Quraysh' as a whole, not to a list of torturers. The restriction to 'a few specific individuals' is a later reading, not something in the text. The pardon at Mecca came years later and does not change what was said at the Kaaba. Nor does it explain why a man bringing a message of mercy answered verbal insults with a sworn promise of slaughter. When militants quote the line, they are quoting a hadith graded hasan to sahih by al-Arna'ut, Shakir and al-Albani. Mainstream scholars can argue about how to read it, but they cannot say it is not in the Prophet's recorded words.

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“I was sent with the sword before the Hour until Allah alone is worshipped” Warfare & Jihad Disbelievers Prophetic Character Strong Musnad Ahmad 5115
"I have been sent, ahead of the Hour, with the sword, until Allah alone, without partner, is worshipped. My provision has been placed under the shade of my spear, and humiliation and abasement have been placed on whoever opposes my command."

What the hadith says

Abdullah ibn Umar reports the Prophet describing his own mission in one sentence: he was sent before the Last Hour with the sword, and the sword has a stated goal, that Allah alone be worshipped. His livelihood comes from the spear, and humiliation is placed on everyone who opposes his command. The report ends with the familiar line “whoever imitates a people is one of them.” It is in Musnad Ahmad 5115 (al-Risala edition; also 5114 and 5667). Its grading is disputed. Shu’ayb al-Arna’ut and his co-editors call Ahmad’s chains weak because of Abd al-Rahman ibn Thabit ibn Thawban; Ahmad Shakir grades the chain sahih, al-Albani grades it hasan (Irwa’ al-Ghalil 5/109), and al-Dhahabi calls it sahih (Siyar 15/509).

Why this is a problem

The verse-by-verse debate over whether jihad was defensive turns on context: who attacked first, which treaty was broken. This report removes the context. It states the purpose of the Prophet’s sending in general terms (“until Allah alone is worshipped”) and names the sword as its instrument. The goal is not the safety of Muslims or freedom to preach; it is universal worship of one God, and the means is armed force. The next clause ties the Prophet’s livelihood to the spear, and the clause after it puts “humiliation and abasement” (al-dhilla wa-l-saghar) on whoever opposes him, the same root that Quran 9:29 uses for the subdued jizya-payer (saghirun).

The report is not an orphan. Al-Bukhari quotes its second half without a chain, introduced with the passive formula 'it is mentioned from Ibn Umar, from the Prophet' (wa-yudhkaru 'an Ibn 'Umar), which signals doubt, as the heading of a chapter on spears in his Book of Jihad (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Jihad, ch. 88), which shows the wording was circulating early. And the same chain, Abu al-Nadr from Ibn Thawban from Hassan ibn Atiyya from Abu Munib, carries the closing line in Abu Dawud 4031, which al-Albani grades hasan sahih.

The Muslim response

The first answer is the chain. The al-Risala editors of the Musnad judge all of Ahmad’s routes weak, and on 5114 they add that some of its wording is objectionable (nakara), because Ibn Thawban is a disputed narrator. The second is interpretive: apologists argue that the sword was for defence and for removing the political obstacles that stopped people hearing Islam, not for forcing belief, since the Quran says there is no compulsion in religion.

Why it fails

The chain objection is one editor’s verdict against several. Ahmad Shakir, al-Albani and al-Dhahabi all accept the chain, and the narrator al-Arna’ut faults is the same narrator whose version of the closing clause al-Albani accepts in Abu Dawud. Nor is the report a fringe text that only critics quote. The Salafi fatwa site IslamQA cites it at face value (“I have been sent ahead of the Hour with the sword so that Allah will be worshipped alone”) as evidence that the sword was one of the major means by which Islam spread, and presents that as a strength (IslamQA 43087).

The defensive reading has to rewrite the sentence. “Until Allah alone is worshipped” states an aim that defence never reaches: a defensive war ends when the attack ends, not when the enemy changes religion. (Al-Sindi, in the al-Risala note to 5667, reads hatta as the purpose of the sending rather than its end-point, but on either reading the aim is worship of Allah alone, not safety.) “No compulsion” may forbid forcing an individual’s heart, but this report describes a mission of armed supremacy in which the outsider who does not convert lives under saghar. It is the arrangement the classical jurists later formalised as the dhimma.

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“These to Paradise and I do not care; these to the Fire and I do not care” Allah's Character Logical Inconsistency Moral Problems Strong Musnad Ahmad 17660
"Allah created Adam, then took the creation out of his back and said: These are in Paradise, and I do not care; and these are in the Fire, and I do not care."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Rahman ibn Qatada al-Sulami heard the Prophet describe what happened after Adam was created. Allah drew all of Adam’s descendants out of his back and divided them on the spot: one group to Paradise, one to the Fire, with the same words over each, wa-la ubali, “and I do not care.” A listener asked the obvious question: “Then on what basis do we act, Messenger of Allah?” The answer: “According to where destiny has fallen.” It is Musnad Ahmad 17660, with parallels from Abu al-Darda’ and another Companion quoted from Ahmad in Mishkat 119 and Mishkat 120, and the same Abd al-Rahman b. Qatada report is in Ibn Hibban 338 by another chain. Al-Arna’ut grades it sahih li-ghayrihi (authentic through its supporting routes), while noting that Ibn Abd al-Barr and Ibn al-Sakan called this particular chain inconsistent; al-Albani grades it sahih (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 48).

Why this is a problem

The canonical version of this scene (Abu Dawud 4703) already has Allah sorting Adam’s offspring into the people of Paradise and the people of Hell before any of them is born. Ahmad’s version adds the one phrase that makes it impossible to soften: God attaches “I do not care” to the damned as well as to the saved. The sorting comes before any deed, so it cannot be a response to deeds, and the speaker announces that the outcome means nothing to him.

The follow-up question shows that the first hearers saw the problem at once. If the lots are already drawn, why act at all? The reply does not say “your choices decide.” It says people act “according to where destiny has fallen”: the deeds themselves follow the decree. A God who assigns people to eternal fire before they are born, steers their actions to match, and declares himself indifferent to the result cannot also be the just judge who punishes them for those actions.

The Muslim response

The standard answer, given in an islamweb fatwa on this hadith and in the dorar commentary, is that “I do not care” expresses Allah’s sovereignty, not callousness: he “is not questioned about what He does” (Quran 21:23). The division reflects Allah’s foreknowledge of what each person will freely choose; it does not compel anyone, and people are still responsible for their acts.

Why it fails

The foreknowledge reading is not in the text. Knowing what someone will choose does not require taking him out of Adam’s back and assigning him a destination, and “I do not care” is not a statement about knowledge at all; it is a statement of attitude. When the Companion asked how action fits in, the Prophet had the chance to say “you are judged by what you choose” and instead pointed back to destiny. Quran 21:23 does not answer the moral objection; it forbids asking it.

Nor can the phrase be dismissed as one stray weak line. It comes through several Companions; al-Albani, al-Hakim and al-Dhahabi call it authentic; al-Arna’ut grades the Ibn Hibban chain strong (qawi); and the Mishkat parallels are graded sound. The milder canonical parallels do not rescue it either: Tirmidhi 3075 is graded weak by Darussalam, and al-Albani accepts Abu Dawud 4703 only without its wiping of Adam’s back. The fullest and best-supported form of the scene is the one with “I do not care.”

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Al-Abbas’s weaned daughter: “If she grows up while I am alive, I will marry her” Child Marriage Prophetic Character Women Basic Musnad Ahmad 26870
"If this little daughter of al-Abbas reaches [maturity] while I am alive, I will marry her."

What the hadith says

This is a weak report and should be read as one. Umm al-Fadl, the wife of the Prophet’s uncle al-Abbas, says the Prophet saw her daughter Umm Habib when the child was fawqa al-fatim, just past weaning age, and said that if “this little daughter of al-Abbas” (bunayya, a diminutive) reached maturity while he was still alive, he would marry her. It is Musnad Ahmad 26870, through Ibn Ishaq, al-Husayn ibn Abdullah, Ikrima and Ibn Abbas. The al-Risala editors grade the chain da’if because of al-Husayn ibn Abdullah; al-Haythami calls the same man matruk (abandoned), though he notes that Ibn Ma’in once called him reliable. On the same page the commentator al-Sindi explains fawqa al-fatim as “over two years old.”

Why this is a problem

The text does not say the Prophet wanted to marry a toddler then and there; the condition is that she first “reach” maturity. What it shows is a grown man looking at a small child and naming her as a future wife, out loud, in front of her mother. In a society where the canonical sources have the Prophet contract marriage with Aisha as a young girl, the transmitters evidently found nothing incredible in the scene: Ahmad recorded it in his Musnad, and al-Arna’ut’s note lists the same report in Abu Ya’la and al-Tabarani.

The problem is the norm the story takes for granted, not a claim that it happened. Earmarking a girl for marriage from infancy treats her future consent as irrelevant and her body as something that becomes available on reaching puberty. That is the practice Islamic law went on to permit.

The Muslim response

The response is mainly the grading, and it is fair. The chain runs through al-Husayn ibn Abdullah, whom the Musnad editors call weak and al-Haythami calls abandoned, so the Prophet cannot be shown to have said it. Even if he did, balaghat means reaching puberty or maturity, so the words describe a possible marriage to a grown woman, not to a child, and nothing came of it.

Why it fails

On authenticity the Muslim response is largely right, and this entry does not claim otherwise: no critic linked here grades the chain acceptable. The remaining point is narrower. A weak hadith still records what Muslim transmitters were willing to say about the Prophet and pass on, and this one was preserved in the largest of the Musnads without any comment that its content was unthinkable. The editors fault a narrator, not the idea.

The “maturity” reading also helps less than it seems. Balaghat means reaching puberty, not adulthood, so the condition in the text is met by a girl in her early teens. The story still has a grown man earmarking a two-year-old as a future bride, and the tradition’s discomfort with it is about the chain, not the content.

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Plague is “a jab from your enemies among the jinn” Science Magic & Occult Strong Musnad Ahmad 19528
"My community will perish through spear-thrusts and plague. … What is plague? … A jab from your enemies among the jinn, and in both there are martyrs."

What the hadith says

Abu Musa al-Ash’ari reports the Prophet saying that his community would perish through ta’n (spear-thrusts, death in battle) and ta’un (plague). The Companions said they knew what spear-thrusts were, and asked what plague was. The answer: wakhz a’da’ikum min al-jinn, “a jab from your enemies among the jinn,” and in both there are martyrs. It is Musnad Ahmad 19528 and 19708, with parallels in al-Tabarani’s al-Mu’jam al-Awsat. The chains are tangled (al-Arna’ut lists the variants on Ziyad ibn ‘Ilaqa and calls Abu Balj disputed), but the text is graded sahih by al-Albani (Sahih al-Jami’ 3951), and Ibn Hajar says that through its routes it is “sahih beyond doubt” (Badhl al-Ma’un 58).

Why this is a problem

This is a direct answer to a direct question: “What is plague?” Neither the question nor the answer is figurative. The Companions said they knew what spear-thrusts were and asked what plague was, and they were told that invisible hostile beings stab people. That is a checkable claim about disease, and it is false. Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by rat fleas, and it spreads by flea bites and, in its pneumonic form, from person to person. A jinn-jab account gives nothing a physician could use: no carrier, no route, no prevention.

The jinn explanation was not a passing remark. Ibn Hajar, the most authoritative commentator on al-Bukhari, discusses it at length in Fath al-Bari’s chapter on plague and defends it as consistent with the physicians of his day, who explained plague by corrupted humours. He also notes that the popular wording “your brothers among the jinn” appears in no chain: the transmitted text says enemies, an agent with intent.

The Muslim response

Modern answers, such as IslamQA’s fatwa on whether Covid is plague and an alukah article on plague, say there is no contradiction: the jinn are the unseen cause and the bacteria or fleas are the physical means through which the jab works. Science describes the mechanism; revelation names what lies behind it. They add that the ta’un of the hadith may be a specific disease rather than every epidemic.

Why it fails

The harmonisation can absorb any finding, which is the sign that it explains nothing. In the fifteenth century the jinn sat comfortably behind humoral theory; today they sit behind Yersinia pestis. A cause that fits every rival theory in turn makes no prediction of its own, and no one can name an observation that would count against it. The hadith did not offer a hidden layer behind a known mechanism; it was given as the answer to “what is plague?” when no mechanism was known.

Narrowing ta’un to one disease does not help either: the bubonic plague that Ibn Hajar and his contemporaries lived through is the one we now know to be bacterial. The report is graded authentic, its wording is “enemies,” and its claim is causal. Germ theory is the test it fails.

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“The wicked are the people of the Fire.” “Who are the wicked?” “Women.” Women Hell Strong Musnad Ahmad 15531
"The wicked are the people of the Fire. It was asked: Messenger of Allah, who are the wicked? He said: Women."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Rahman ibn Shibl reports the Prophet saying that al-fussaq, the wicked or sinful, are the people of the Fire. Asked who the wicked are, he answers in one word: “Women.” A man objects: “Messenger of Allah, are they not our mothers, our sisters and our wives?” He replies: “Yes, but when they are given, they are not grateful, and when they are tested, they are not patient.” It is Musnad Ahmad 15531 (repeated within the longer 15666) and al-Hakim’s Mustadrak. It is graded authentic across the board: al-Arna’ut and his co-editors call it sahih, al-Albani says its chain is sahih and connected (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 3058), and al-Hakim calls it sahih on the conditions of al-Bukhari and Muslim, with al-Dhahabi agreeing.

Why this is a problem

The site already covers the canonical report that most of the people of Hell are women (Bukhari 29, 304; Muslim 79). That one is a statistic about the population of Hell. This one is a definition. The category “the wicked who are the people of the Fire” is defined, when the question is put, as “women,” without qualification.

The exchange that follows closes off the charitable reading. The man understood the answer as a statement about women as a class, which is exactly why he named the women of his own family. The Prophet does not correct him (“no, I meant only some women”); he says “yes” and gives a reason that is itself a generalisation about female character: ungrateful when given, impatient when tested. A moral failing is assigned to half of humanity, and eternal fire is attached to it.

The Muslim response

An islamweb fatwa on the grading and meaning of this hadith accepts it as authentic and explains that it does not condemn women in general: women are singled out because these traits are common among them (ghalib 'alayhinna), men who share the traits fall under the same threat, and women without them are not included. It is a warning meant to make women avoid those traits, and it cites a hadith promising Paradise to the woman who prays, fasts, guards her chastity and obeys her husband.

Why it fails

The words “common among them” and “those who have these traits” are added by the commentator; they are not in the text. The question was “who are the wicked?” and the answer named a sex, not a behaviour. If the point were that ingratitude and impatience lead to the Fire, the natural answer would have been “the ungrateful and the impatient,” which covers men too. Instead the traits are given afterwards as the reason why women in general fit the description.

Since the report is graded sahih by every critic linked here, a Muslim cannot set it aside as weak. Read beside Bukhari and Muslim it is not a softer echo of the canonical texts but their hardest form: women are not only the majority in Hell, they are the answer to the question of who the wicked are.

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Women “clothed yet naked” at the mosque doors: “Curse them, for they are cursed” Women Moderate Musnad Ahmad 7083
"Their women will be clothed yet naked, with something on their heads like the humps of lean Bactrian camels. Curse them, for they are cursed."

What the hadith says

Abdullah ibn Amr reports the Prophet foretelling that at the end of his community men will ride on saddles like camel-saddles and dismount at the doors of the mosque. “Their women will be clothed yet naked, with something on their heads like the humps of lean Bactrian camels. Curse them, for they are cursed.” The report continues: “If there were a nation after you, your women would serve their women, just as the women of the nations before you serve you.” It is Musnad Ahmad 7083, also in Ibn Hibban 5753 and al-Tabarani. The graders disagree: the al-Risala editors call the chain weak because of Abdullah ibn ‘Ayyash al-Qitbani, Ahmad Shakir calls it sahih, al-Albani calls it hasan (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 2683), and al-Haythami says its narrators are those of the Sahih.

Why this is a problem

The canonical version in Muslim 2128 already says such women “will not enter Paradise nor smell its fragrance.” Ahmad’s version turns a prophecy into an order addressed to the believers: il’anuhunna, “curse them.” The object is the women themselves (a feminine plural pronoun), not their clothing, and the reason given is a status (“they are cursed”), not an act. The men in the same scene, riding up to the mosque on their fine saddles, receive no curse.

The last line shows the social order the text assumes. The women of earlier nations “serve you,” and the women of Muslims would serve the next nation’s women in turn. Women of conquered peoples working as servants for the conquerors is presented as the normal way of things.

The Muslim response

An islamweb fatwa explains that the curse covers any woman of the community who has these attributes, that it is a real curse but lower than the curse on unbelievers (it does not cut them off from God's mercy entirely), and that there is no harm in praying for such women to be guided. The weakness of Ahmad’s chain, as judged by the al-Risala editors, also means the command to curse may not be the Prophet’s words at all.

Why it fails

The grading defence cuts both ways. Al-Arna’ut calls the chain weak, but Shakir and al-Albani accept it. Al-Hakim also graded it sahih, although al-Dhahabi objected to the same narrator al-Arna’ut faults. A report that two of the three leading modern editors of hadith accept cannot simply be dropped.

Even the fatwa accepts that the women themselves are cursed; it only softens the curse's force. The text commands believers to curse them and states that they are cursed. A rule that tells men to curse women for how they dress, while the men beside them go uncursed, places the moral weight of public modesty on women. That is the problem the softer pastoral advice tries to manage.

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“Men are ruined when they obey women” Women Governance Basic Musnad Ahmad 20455
"Now men are ruined, when they obey women. Men are ruined when they obey women."

What the hadith says

Abu Bakra reports that a messenger came to the Prophet, whose head was in Aisha’s lap, with news that his army had defeated its enemy. The Prophet rose and fell in prostration, then questioned the messenger, who told him, among other things, that a woman had been in charge of the enemy’s affairs. The Prophet said, three times: “Now men are ruined, when they obey women.” It is Musnad Ahmad 20455, with parallels in al-Hakim’s Mustadrak and al-Tabarani’s al-Mu’jam al-Awsat. Every route goes through Bakkar ibn Abd al-Aziz. The al-Risala editors grade it weak for that reason, as does al-Albani (Da’if al-Jami’ 6097); al-Hakim called the chain sahih, and al-Dhahabi agreed.

Why this is a problem

The occasion is a military victory, and the detail the Prophet picks out of the report is that the defeated side was led by a woman. His comment is not about that one ruler; it is a general verdict on men (al-rijal) and women (al-nisa’): when men obey women, men are ruined. Repeated three times, it is presented as a lesson, and in context it implies that a woman’s authority explains the enemy’s defeat.

This is the same judgement the canonical collections preserve in a more famous form. In Bukhari 4425, Abu Bakra again reports the Prophet saying, when he heard that the Persians had made a daughter of the Chosroes their ruler, “A people who entrust their affairs to a woman will never prosper.” Ahmad’s report widens it from rule to obedience in general.

The Muslim response

The report is weak. Its only route runs through Bakkar ibn Abd al-Aziz, whom the al-Risala editors and al-Albani judge weak, and the critics who called it sahih (al-Hakim, and al-Dhahabi in his summary) are known for lenient grading in the Mustadrak. A saying that rests on one weak narrator cannot be used to define Islam’s view of women.

Why it fails

On the chain the Muslim response is right, and this entry is rated accordingly: the wording “men are ruined when they obey women” cannot be shown to be the Prophet’s. But the weakness removes only the wording, not the view. The canonical Bukhari 4425, from the same Companion and about the same kind of news, says that a people led by a woman will not prosper, and al-Hakim himself notes that the report has a supporting text that is sahih on al-Bukhari’s and Muslim’s conditions.

What the weak report shows is how that canonical judgement was received and extended: transmitters and graders such as al-Hakim and al-Dhahabi found it natural that the Prophet would turn news of a woman ruler into a general rule about men obeying women.

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“On the back of every camel is a devil, so name Allah when you ride” Animals Magic & Occult Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Ahmad 16039
"On the back of every camel there is a devil. So when you ride them, name Allah, Mighty and Majestic, and then do not hold back from your needs."

What the hadith says

Hamza ibn Amr al-Aslami heard the Prophet say that a devil (shaytan) sits on the back of every camel, so riders should name Allah when they mount and then go about their business without holding back. It is Musnad Ahmad 16039; al-Nasa’i (al-Sunan al-Kubra 10265) and al-Darimi 2709 have the wording “on the top of every camel’s hump,” and al-Darimi gives it a chapter of its own. The al-Risala editors grade Ahmad’s chain hasan (Usama ibn Zayd al-Laythi is acceptable unless contradicted), Husayn Salim Asad grades al-Darimi’s chain hasan, and al-Albani grades the hadith sahih (Sahih al-Jami’ 4031). Al-Nasa’i himself remarks that Usama ibn Zayd is “not strong.”

Why this is a problem

The report gives a supernatural explanation for an ordinary fact about animals. Camels are large, strong and can be skittish, and riders get thrown. The hadith places a devil on every one of them and prescribes a spoken formula, the name of Allah, as the protection. This is the structure of folk magic: an invisible agent behind a natural hazard, and a ritual word that neutralises it.

The scope is “every camel,” not a particular dangerous one, so the devil is presented as a standing feature of the species. Nothing in the text marks it as a figure of speech.

The Muslim response

Muslim commentators are divided. The dorar commentary (on Abu Hurayra's parallel wording) gives two readings: either a real devil above every camel, driven off by naming Allah when riding, or a devilish trait in the animal itself, its shying and bolting; it adds that the rider should curb his pride by remembering that Allah is the one who carries him. Ibn Taymiyya, quoted in an islamweb fatwa, explained that camels are “of the genus of devils” in the sense that every rebellious thing is called a devil of its kind. On either reading, naming Allah when riding is a sensible act of remembrance.

Why it fails

The figurative reading is possible, and this entry is rated Basic for that reason: shaytan can describe an unruly creature, and saying a prayer before a risky journey harms no one. But the literal reading is also a mainstream one, given first by the commentary, and the prescribed remedy assumes an agent that hears the name of Allah. Ibn Taymiyya’s explanation does not remove the devil; it makes the camel itself partly devilish.

The report is graded acceptable by al-Arna’ut, Asad and al-Albani, so it cannot be dismissed on its chain. What it records is a worldview in which animal behaviour is explained by demons and managed by formulas, transmitted as prophetic guidance.

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Women in Paradise: only as many as one white-marked crow among a flock of crows Women Paradise Animals Strong Musnad Ahmad 17770
"None of the women will enter Paradise except those of them who are like this crow among the crows."

What the hadith says

On a pilgrimage, Amr b. al-As told his companions that he had once been with the Prophet in this same mountain pass when the Prophet said: "Look, do you see anything?" They saw a flock of crows, among them one a'sam crow, red of beak and legs. The Prophet then said that no women enter Paradise except those who are like that crow among the crows (Musnad Ahmad 17770). In the longer 17826 the memory is set off by a woman in a howdah at Marr al-Zahran, who in one narrator's wording had her bracelets and rings on her hands. An a'sam crow is one marked with white. Al-Sindi, quoted by the editors, takes it as white-winged and explains the point: "he meant how few of them enter it, because this mark is rare among crows". The al-Risala editors (al-Arna'ut et al.) grade 17770 isnaduhu sahih (sound chain) and say of 17826 that its narrators are trustworthy, though Hammad b. Salama alone transmits it. Al-Albani calls the chain sahih (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 4/466), al-Hakim calls it sahih on Muslim's conditions, and al-Haythami says its narrators are trustworthy. The six canonical books do not contain it.

Why this is a problem

The canonical collections say that most of the people of the Fire are women (Bukhari 29, 5196). That is a claim about Hell. This report makes a claim about Paradise, and it gives a proportion: women who get in are as rare as one oddly marked bird in a flock. The commentator quoted in the Musnad's own edition reads it the same way, as the scarcity of women who enter.

Nor can it be softened by limiting it to some women. A weaker version restricts the saying to women who display their finery. The Islam Q&A answer on this hadith rejects that version as weak and treats the unrestricted wording in the Musnad as the sound one. In 17826 it is the sight of one woman with her jewellery on her hands that sets Amr recalling this remark about women in general. The report is graded sound by the Musnad's modern editors and by al-Albani, so it cannot be set aside as a fringe report.

The Muslim response

The same Islam Q&A answer says that reports about many women in the Fire are not meant to make women despair. They are warnings meant to push women towards charity and good deeds, and the Quran promises reward to the righteous woman as to the righteous man (Q 40:40). It also quotes al-Qurtubi, who suggests that such reports describe the time when women are in the Fire. After they are brought out by intercession, he says, women will be the majority in Paradise.

Why it fails

The text does not say that few women enter Paradise at first. It says that none enter except those like the rare crow. Al-Qurtubi's answer accepts that most women go to the Fire first. In the same passage that Islam Q&A quotes, he adds that at that point each man in Paradise will have two wives from among the women of this world. In his account the women of Paradise are counted as wives.

The 'warning' reading does not fit the image either. A warning names a sin that a woman can avoid. This report names her sex and compares her chances to the odds of a crow being born with white markings. The only way out it offers is to be the exception.

Check it yourself

Women the fewest in Paradise: 'the two reds, gold and silk, distracted them' Women Paradise Basic Musnad Ahmad 22232
"I saw no one in it fewer than the rich and women. It was said to me: As for the rich, they are here at the gate being reckoned and purged; as for the women, the two reds distracted them: gold and silk."

What the hadith says

Abu Umama reports the Prophet saying that he entered Paradise and heard footsteps ahead of him, which were Bilal's. Most of its people were the poor of the Emigrants and the children of the Muslims, and he saw no one there fewer than the rich and women. He was told that the rich were at the gate, being reckoned with, and that the women had been kept busy by "the two reds", gold and silk (Musnad Ahmad 22232). The report goes on to the Prophet, then Abu Bakr, then Umar each outweighing the whole community on a scale, and to Abd al-Rahman b. Awf arriving late because of his wealth. According to the editors, Ahmad also included it in abridged form in his Fada'il al-Sahaba. It is graded very weak. The al-Risala editors call the chain da'if jiddan: Ali b. Yazid al-Alhani is 'flimsy in hadith', and Ubayd Allah b. Zahr and Mutarrih b. Yazid are weak. Al-Albani calls it munkar jiddan (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 5346), and Ibn al-Jawzi lists it among fabricated reports in al-Mawdu'at as la yasihh (not authentic).

Why this is a problem

The sound canonical version of this vision (Bukhari 5196) already has the poor as most of those entering Paradise, the wealthy held at its gate, and women as most of those entering the Fire. It gives no reason for the women. This report supplies one, and the reason is jewellery and fine cloth. Women are put alongside the rich as the two groups fewest there, both held back by worldly goods. But the rich are explained as waiting at the gate to be reckoned, which implies they will come in, while the women's absence is put down to adornment, with no such prospect.

The picture of women as too absorbed in gold and silk to reach Paradise is a stereotype, presented here as something the Prophet was told in Paradise.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report carries no weight. The Musnad's own editors call it very weak, al-Albani calls it very objectionable (munkar jiddan), and Ibn al-Jawzi placed it among fabrications (dorar.net gradings). The sound reports say only that women are numerous in the Fire, and they link this to specific sins, not to jewellery.

Why it fails

On the chain, the response is right, and this entry does not claim otherwise. The point is what the tradition kept. Ahmad recorded the report in his Musnad and, in shorter form, in his book on the merits of the Companions. Its frame matches a sound hadith and its claim matches another. Ahmad's own crow report (17770), graded sound by the same editors, also says that very few women enter Paradise. This weak report gives a cause for what that sound one only states, and it shows the theme being elaborated with the Prophet's name attached.

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'Look where you stand with him: he is your Paradise and your Fire' Women Moderate Musnad Ahmad 19003
"Then look where you stand with him, for he is only your Paradise and your Fire."

What the hadith says

Al-Husayn b. Mihsan reports that his paternal aunt came to the Prophet about something she needed. When she had finished, he asked her: "Do you have a husband?" She said yes. "How are you towards him?" She said: "I do not fall short with him, except in what I am unable to do." He replied: "Then look where you stand with him, for he is only your Paradise and your Fire" (Musnad Ahmad 19003). It is also in al-Hakim's Mustadrak and al-Nasa'i's al-Sunan al-Kubra, not in the six canonical books. The al-Risala editors say the chain muhtamil li-l-tahsin (can possibly be raised to hasan). Whether al-Husayn was a Companion is disputed: al-Bukhari, Ibn Abi Hatim and Ibn Hibban count him a Successor. The editors note that al-Hakim graded it sahih and al-Dhahabi agreed, and they mark that with an exclamation point. Al-Albani grades it hasan (Sahih al-Jami' 1509) and sahih (Sahih al-Targhib 1933), and al-Haythami says its narrators are those of the Sahih except Husayn, who is trustworthy.

Why this is a problem

The woman has just told the Prophet that she does everything for her husband that she is able to do. The reply does not reassure her. It warns her that her eternal fate turns on where she stands with this one man. The wording is restrictive: innama huwa, he is only her Paradise and her Fire. Her prayer, her fasting and her conduct towards anyone else are not mentioned. The measure offered is where she stands with a husband.

This report has no counterpart in which a husband is told that his wife is his Paradise and his Fire. One spouse's salvation is framed around the other, and only in one direction. Al-Albani grades the report hasan to sahih, so it is not marginal, and it is used today to teach wives their duties, as the response below shows.

The Muslim response

HadithAnswers accepts the hadith as authentic, citing al-Hakim with al-Dhahabi's agreement, and presents it under the heading of the importance of a wife being dutiful to her husband. The usual defence is that it encourages good companionship. It is her own conduct, not her husband, that brings her to Paradise or the Fire, just as any good or bad deed would.

Why it fails

The defence is right that the husband does not decide her fate. But it concedes the point that matters: the conduct the Prophet singles out as deciding Paradise or Fire is her conduct towards her husband. The text could have said 'your deeds are your Paradise and your Fire'. Instead it puts the husband, with innama, in the place of the deeds.

The setting makes it sharper. The woman has already said that she holds nothing back except what is beyond her. A standard that still answers this with a warning has no point at which a wife can be sure she has done enough.

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Aisha, six, betrothed; at nine, taken off a swing, left at the door until her panting stopped, and seated in his lap Child Marriage Women Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad Ahmad 25769
"Then she brought me in, and there was the Messenger of Allah sitting on a bed in our house, with men and women of the Ansar with him. She seated me in his lap, then said: These are your family; may Allah bless you in them and bless them in you. The men and women jumped up and left, and the Messenger of Allah consummated the marriage with me in our house ... and I was then nine years old."

What the hadith says

After Khadija died, Khawla bint Hakim offered the Prophet a virgin, Aisha, or a previously married woman, Sawda. Abu Bakr's first reply was: "Is she suitable for him? She is only his brother's daughter." The Prophet sent back: "I am your brother and you are my brother in Islam, and your daughter is suitable for me." Aisha's mother then revealed that al-Mut'im b. Adi had spoken for her for his son. Abu Bakr was freed from that promise only when Mut'im's wife said she feared Abu Bakr would convert her son. The marriage was contracted "and Aisha was at that time six years old". In the second part, told in Aisha's own voice, the Prophet came to their house in Medina. Her mother took her down from a swing between two palm trunks, parted her short hair and wiped her face with water. She brought her to the door, "and I was panting until my breath settled", then led her in to the scene quoted above. The al-Risala editors grade it isnaduhu hasan (good chain) because of Muhammad b. Amr. They reject al-Haythami's view that most of it is mursal (missing a link), saying it is all connected, and they report that Ibn Hajar called the chain hasan. Ibn Kathir says the wording looks mursal but is connected. Abu Dawud 4937 has the same chain but stops after the swing: "and he related the rest of the hadith".

Why this is a problem

The ages of six and nine are already canonical. What the Musnad adds is the scene. Abu Bakr's first reaction is an objection. The girl had already been promised to another family's son. At nine she is playing on a swing when she is taken down, tidied, and kept at the door until she stopped panting, then brought in. In front of the guests she is placed in her husband's lap and handed over ("these are your family"). The guests leave, and the marriage is consummated in her parents' house.

Nothing in this needs a sexual reading of the lap. The mother is making a public handover, and two manuscripts even read "he seated me". The problem is that the narrative itself shows a child: the swing, the short hair, the breathlessness, and being led in by her mother. The step from the swing to the wedding happens within one paragraph, in a report the Musnad's editors grade hasan.

The Muslim response

Islam Q&A argues that the marriage was not driven by desire. It gives three reasons: the Prophet's dream of her, the intelligence he had noticed in her "even as a small child", which suited her to transmit his teaching, and his love for Abu Bakr. It adds that in hot countries people mature and marry early, that girls differ in physical readiness, and that early marriage was normal in that time and place.

Why it fails

These are reasons for choosing Aisha. They do not address her age when the marriage was consummated, and the claim of early maturity runs against this report's own details. Nothing in it suggests maturity. It shows a girl who has to be fetched from play and calmed down before she is handed over. Islam Q&A itself speaks of qualities the Prophet noticed in her "even as a small child".

The 'norms of the time' argument gets no support from inside the story either. Abu Bakr's one objection was kinship ("she is only his brother's daughter"), answered with religious brotherhood; no one in the report raises her readiness at all.

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He saw whiteness on his new bride's flank and told her to put her clothes back on Women Prophetic Character Basic Musnad Ahmad 16032
"When he went in to her, laid aside his garment and sat on the bed, he saw whiteness on her flank. He moved away from the bed and said: Put your clothes on. And he took back nothing of what he had given her."

What the hadith says

Jamil b. Zayd says he accompanied an old man of the Ansar who said he had been a Companion, called Ka'b b. Zayd or Zayd b. Ka'b. The old man told him that the Prophet married a woman of the Banu Ghifar. On the wedding night, as he undressed and sat on the bed, he saw whiteness on her side, moved away, and told her to dress (Musnad Ahmad 16032). The text says only "whiteness" (bayad) and names no disease. The report is weak. The al-Risala editors call the chain da'if because of Jamil b. Zayd: Ibn Ma'in said he was not trustworthy, Abu Hatim called him weak, and al-Bukhari said his hadith is not sound. They also call the chain confused (mudtarib), quoting al-Baghawi and Ibn Abd al-Barr. In the other books that carry it, the Companion becomes Ka'b b. Zayd, Zayd b. Ka'b, Abd Allah b. Ka'b, Sa'd b. Zayd or Ibn Umar, and some versions add that he gave her the dowry, or paid it in full. Al-Haythami calls Jamil weak, and al-Albani grades the hadith da'if jiddan (very weak).

Why this is a problem

As told, a marriage ends on its wedding night because the groom, having laid aside his garment, sees a pale patch on his bride's skin. She is told to cover herself, and the story ends. She is not named, she is not asked anything, and her side of the story is not recorded. The only thing said in her favour is that he did not take back what he had given her.

The report did not stay in one obscure book. The editors trace it through al-Bukhari's al-Tarikh al-Kabir, al-Tahawi, al-Bayhaqi's Sunan, al-Hakim and Sa'id b. Mansur. Jurists discussed it when deciding whether a hidden bodily defect allows a husband to annul a marriage.

The Muslim response

The standard answer is that the report is weak and its chain confused, because everything goes back to Jamil b. Zayd, so nothing rests on it (al-Albani's and others' gradings). Where it is used at all, it is only to support the rule that a serious hidden defect is grounds for annulment, and it shows him treating her generously by letting her keep what he had given.

Why it fails

On the chain, the response is right, and the entry claims nothing more than that the story circulated. That is the point. A report this poorly attested was copied by al-Bukhari (in his biographical al-Tarikh al-Kabir, not his Sahih), al-Tahawi, al-Bayhaqi and al-Hakim. Its Companion changed name from one version to the next, and some versions added that he paid her dowry in full. The tradition kept the story and improved the Prophet's part in it. It did not add anything about the bride.

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The stoning 'verse': Umar asks to write it down, and the Prophet seems to dislike it Hudud Scripture Integrity Abrogation Moderate Musnad Ahmad 21596
"Zayd said: I heard the Messenger of Allah say: The old man and the old woman, if they commit zina, stone them outright. Umar said: When it was revealed I came to the Messenger of Allah and said: Let me write it down. (Shu'ba said: It was as though he disliked that.)"

What the hadith says

Kathir b. al-Salt reports that while Sa'id b. al-As and Zayd b. Thabit were writing out the codices of the Quran, they came to "this verse". Zayd said he had heard the Prophet say: "The old man and the old woman, if they commit zina, stone them outright." Umar said that when it was revealed he had asked the Prophet to let him write it down. The narrator Shu'ba adds: "It was as though he disliked that." Umar then remarked: "Do you not see that the old man, if he is not muhsan [married], is flogged, and that the young man who commits zina when muhsan is stoned?" (Musnad Ahmad 21596). The al-Risala editors say its narrators are trustworthy, all of them men of al-Bukhari and Muslim except Kathir b. al-Salt, who is also trustworthy. Al-Albani calls the chain sahih (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 6/974), and Ibn Hazm calls it jayyid (good). The wording of the line is canonical: Umar quotes it in Ibn Majah 2553. The request to write it, the apparent dislike and Umar's objection appear only in this report and in the non-canonical books that share its chain.

Why this is a problem

In Ibn Majah 2553 Umar says of this line, "I have recited it." Here he says it was "revealed", and that when he asked to write it down the Prophet seemed unwilling. Zayd, who was copying the codices, calls it something he heard the Prophet say. Umar then points out that its wording does not fit the law actually applied, where stoning depends on marriage, not age. In a parallel quoted by the editors (al-Nasa'i, al-Sunan al-Kubra 7148), Zayd says "we used to recite" the line. When Marwan asks, "Shall we not put it in the codex?", he answers: "No. Do you not see that the two young [married] people are stoned?"

So the men who compiled the Quran remembered a line that the second caliph called revealed and recited. They left it out of the codex, partly because its wording conflicted with the law they practised. Either a revealed verse was left out of the Quran, or the penalty of stoning rests on a line that its own transmitters could not confirm as Quran.

The Muslim response

The usual answer is naskh al-tilawa: the wording was withdrawn from recitation while its ruling remained. The Musnad's editors also quote Muhammad al-Sadiq Arjun, who argues that Zayd's reply to Marwan shows he had not established that what he heard from the Prophet was Quran that had to be written in the codex. A line whose wording conflicts with the agreed law on stoning, Arjun says, cannot be Quran that has to be written in the codex.

Why it fails

The two answers point in opposite directions. Abrogation of recitation assumes the line was once Quran. Arjun's answer says it never was. Arjun's view protects the Quran at Umar's expense: in this report Umar says it was "revealed", and in Ibn Majah 2553 (graded sahih on the sunnah.com page) he says "I have recited it", in a speech warning that people would one day say they do not find stoning in the Book of Allah.

The abrogation view has its own cost. It leaves a ruling still in force whose only revealed wording was withdrawn, and that wording, by Umar's own observation, stated the ruling wrongly. If Shu'ba's impression is right, the Prophet himself was reluctant to have it written. Either way, the law of stoning rests on a text whose status the Companions could not settle.

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Ali takes 'one of the best' captive girls for his family's share and has intercourse with her Slavery & Captives Sexual Issues Warfare & Jihad Strong Musnad Ahmad 22967
"Did you not see the young slave-girl who was among the captives? I divided and took out the fifth, and she fell into the fifth; then she fell to the household of the Prophet, then she fell to the family of Ali, and I had intercourse with her."

What the hadith says

Burayda al-Aslami, who says he hated Ali more than anyone, went on a raid that took captives, and the Prophet sent Ali to take out the one-fifth share (khumus). Among the captives was a wasifa, a young slave-girl, "one of the best of the captives". Ali took out the fifth, divided it, and came out with his head dripping (from the ritual bath). Asked about it, he gave the explanation quoted above. When Burayda confirmed the complaint the leader had written, the Prophet asked him whether he hated Ali, told him not to, and swore that "the share of Ali's family in the fifth is worth more than a wasifa" (Musnad Ahmad 22967). The al-Risala editors grade the hadith sahih, with a hasan chain, and al-Haythami says its narrators are those of the Sahih except Abd al-Jalil b. Atiyya, whom he calls trustworthy but with some softness (fihi lin). Bukhari 4350 tells the same story more briefly. Its Arabic says only that Ali "had bathed", and sunnah.com's English adds in brackets "(after a sexual act with a slave-girl from the Khumus)". The text of Ahmad 22967 gives the girl no age, and it says nothing about her consent.

Why this is a problem

What Bukhari's translator has to put in brackets, the Musnad gives in Ali's own words. A woman taken in a raid is assigned by the man doing the dividing to his own family's share, and he has intercourse with her before the division is even reported. The Prophet does not question it. He defends Ali and measures her worth against Ali's share: the family's portion of the fifth is worth more than a slave-girl.

The Musnad's editors themselves raise the difficulty: Ali had intercourse with her without the waiting period (istibra') that establishes a captive is not pregnant, and he allotted her to himself. They refer readers to Ibn Hajar's answer, which they quote at no. 19928. Ibn Hajar's first answer is that the case "is taken to mean that she was a virgin who had not reached puberty", and that Ali held, as other Companions did, that a girl like her needed no waiting period. Al-Khattabi, as quoted there, offers three possibilities: that she was a virgin, or "below puberty", or that Ali's own reasoning (ijtihad) led him to hold that no waiting period applied to her.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the Prophet himself approved Ali's conduct, and that a captive allotted in the division was lawful to her owner under the law of war of the time. As for the editors' two difficulties, Ibn Hajar (Fath al-Bari 8/67) argues that dividing the spoils while being one of the people entitled to them is lawful, just as an imam who is one of his subjects divides among them. On the waiting period, he offers explanations: she was a prepubescent virgin, or she may have had a period right after becoming his, become clean after a day and a night, and only then been approached, "and there is nothing to rule that out".

Why it fails

The defence of the timing makes the case worse. To explain why Ali did not wait, the leading commentator on al-Bukhari first proposes that the girl was below puberty, and al-Khattabi lists it among his three possibilities. The text gives no age. The age enters through the scholars' attempt to make the act lawful. Ibn Hajar's alternative, a period that began and ended within a day and a night, is a speculation that he can only support by saying nothing rules it out.

The defence also never addresses the woman. She is "one of the best of the captives", she passes from the spoils to the fifth to the Prophet's household to Ali's family in a single sentence, and the Prophet's final word values her below a share of booty.

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'Your prayer in your people's mosque is better than in my mosque': she prays in the darkest corner of her house until she dies Women Ritual Absurdities Moderate Musnad Ahmad 27090
"... and your prayer in the mosque of your people is better for you than your prayer in my mosque. She gave orders, and a prayer place was built for her in the furthest and darkest spot of her house, and she prayed in it until she met Allah."

What the hadith says

Umm Humayd, wife of Abu Humayd al-Sa'idi, told the Prophet that she loved to pray with him. He said he knew it, but that her prayer in her inner room was better for her than in her chamber, her chamber better than her house, her house better than the mosque of her people, and the mosque of her people better than "my mosque". Her nephew, who narrates it, adds that she had a prayer place built in the furthest and darkest spot of her house and prayed there until she died (Musnad Ahmad 27090). Al-Sindi, quoted by the editors, explains the ranking: "the narrower and more concealed the place, the better" for a woman's prayer. The al-Risala editors grade it hadith hasan, and they quote Ibn Hajar ("Ahmad's chain is hasan") and al-Haythami. Ibn Hibban and Ibn Khuzayma also record it. In Musnad Ahmad 26542 Umm Salama reports the Prophet saying: "The best mosques for women are the depths of their houses". The editors grade this hasan through supporting reports, and al-Albani grades it sahih. The nearest canonical text, Abu Dawud 570 (Ibn Mas'ud), ranks a woman's inner chamber above her house, but it mentions neither the Prophet's mosque nor Umm Humayd.

Why this is a problem

The Prophet's mosque is otherwise one of the most rewarding places to pray: "one prayer in this mosque of mine is better than a thousand prayers elsewhere, except al-Masjid al-Haram" (Bukhari 1190). For a woman who wanted to pray behind the Prophet himself, the scale is reversed. Every step away from public worship is worth more, down to the inner storeroom, and his own mosque comes last.

The rule rewards concealment as such: the narrower and darker the place, the better. The narrator then presents a woman who obeyed it completely as an example. She shut herself into the furthest and darkest corner of her house and prayed there for the rest of her life. Umm Salama's report makes it general: the best mosque for a woman is the depth of her house.

The Muslim response

Muslims point out that this is a ranking of merit, not a ban. The Musnad's editors cite the Prophet's command in Ahmad 5468, "Do not prevent the female servants of Allah from Allah's mosques, though their houses are better for them". Women may attend, and the hadith only says what is more rewarding for them. Umm Humayd's prayer room was her own choice, not a command.

Why it fails

That is correct, and the entry does not say women were barred. But a ranking of merit is how practice is shaped: women are told that coming is allowed and staying away is better. The mosque where one prayer is better than a thousand elsewhere (Mecca's Sacred Mosque excepted), the place Umm Humayd wanted to pray, is ranked last for her.

Her choice is exactly what the ranking recommends, carried to its end. The tradition did not record it as excessive. It closes the hadith with it as the model answer.

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'Do not lift your stick from your household, as discipline, and make them fear Allah' Women Moral Problems Basic Musnad Ahmad 22075
"Spend on your dependants from your means, do not lift your stick from them, as discipline, and make them fear Allah."

What the hadith says

Mu'adh b. Jabal lists ten things the Prophet charged him with: never associate anything with Allah, even if you are killed and burned; never disobey your parents, even if they order you to leave your family and property; never deliberately miss a prescribed prayer; never drink wine; avoid sin; never flee the battle line; stand firm when a plague strikes; and finally the household charge quoted above (Musnad Ahmad 22075). 'Iyal are a man's dependants, the whole household, not only his wife. The chain is weak. The al-Risala editors grade it da'if li-inqita'ihi (weak because broken), since Abd al-Rahman b. Jubayr b. Nufayr never met Mu'adh. They add that al-Tabarani's connected version runs through Amr b. Waqid, whose hadith was abandoned. Al-Haythami says the same about the break. A similar charge from Abu al-Darda appears in al-Bukhari's al-Adab al-Mufrad 18: "do not lift your stick from your family, and make them fear Allah". The editors note that its narrator Shahr is weak, and the versions of Abu al-Darda's charge in Ibn Majah lack the stick clause.

Why this is a problem

The stick here is a figure of speech, and it is never to be taken off them. The classical lexicographer al-Zamakhshari glosses "do not lift your stick from your family" as "do not leave them without discipline". The same dictionary entry uses the stick as the ordinary image for a herdsman's hand over his flock: to be "hard of stick" or "soft of stick" means harshness or gentleness. The charge, placed among the duties of faith, is that a man must never let his household out from under his stick. It belongs alongside the published "hang the whip where the household can see it" (al-Tabarani). That is a different text, but it is the same picture of a household ruled by a visible threat.

The English of al-Adab al-Mufrad 18 on sunnah.com reads "Do not raise a stick against your wife". The Arabic says la tarfa' 'asaka 'an ahlika, "do not lift your stick from your family". The translation turns a charge never to take the stick off them into a ban on using it.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is broken and the report is weak. They also answer that the phrase is a figure, not an order to beat. As al-Zamakhshari explains, it means only that a man should not leave his household without moral training, and the text pairs it with spending on them and teaching them to fear Allah.

Why it fails

Both points are fair: the chain is weak, and the text does not order a beating. What remains is the choice of figure. Of all the images for raising a family, this one is the stick, and the instruction is that it must never be lifted away. The saying survives in separate weak chains, from Mu'adh and from Abu al-Darda. Ahmad recorded the first, and al-Bukhari the second in his al-Adab al-Mufrad (not his Sahih). The English translation on sunnah.com reverses it.

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Most in the Fire are women 'who, if trusted, divulge; if asked, are stingy; if they ask, importune' Women Hell Basic Musnad Ahmad 14800
"Most of those I saw in it were the women who, if trusted, divulge; if asked, are stingy; and if they ask, they importune. (One narrator adds: and if given, are not grateful.)"

What the hadith says

Jabir reports that during a noon or afternoon prayer the Prophet reached out for something and then stepped back, and the rows stepped back with him. Afterwards Ubayy b. Ka'b asked him why. He said that Paradise had been shown to him and he had reached for a bunch of its grapes. Then the Fire was shown to him, and when he felt its scorching heat he drew back. He gave the description of women quoted above, and he also saw Amr b. Luhayy dragging his intestines in the Fire (Musnad Ahmad 14800). The same report appears again at 21250 and 21251, which gives the chain through Ubayy b. Ka'b and says only "like it". In 21250 the line about gratitude is part of the main text. The al-Risala editors grade all three isnaduhu da'if (weak chain) because Abd Allah b. Muhammad b. Aqil alone gives the story in this form. They add that the core story is sound and that the Prophet's statement about women "is sound in a different wording". The six books do not contain this list of traits. The sound canonical form, Bukhari 29, gives ingratitude to husbands as the reason.

Why this is a problem

Bukhari 29 names one fault: ingratitude to husbands and to kindness. This report gives a character sketch. The women who fill the Fire are those who cannot keep a confidence, who are stingy when asked, and who pester when they want something. Grammatically the sentence picks out women with these traits rather than all women, but the traits themselves are the stock complaints made about women's speech and money, and here they are set in a vision of Hell in the Prophet's name.

Ahmad recorded it three times, all through Ibn Aqil, who gives it under two different Companions.

The Muslim response

The editors of the Musnad grade this wording weak, which is the first answer. The broader answer, given by Islam Q&A for the 'women in the Fire' reports, is that they are warnings meant to drive women to charity and good deeds and are linked to specific sins. They are not a verdict on women as such, and the righteous woman is promised the same reward as the righteous man.

Why it fails

On the wording, the response is right. The editors accept the core story and the general statement about women; what they reject is this list of vices. That is the point of the entry: the canonical claim stayed fixed, and the tradition filled in an explanation. In Ahmad's Musnad, that explanation was a set of familiar complaints about women, presented as what the Prophet saw in Hell.

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Inspecting a prospective bride: 'Smell her side-teeth and look at her heel tendons' Women Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Ahmad 13424
"Smell her side-teeth and look at her heel tendons."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik reports that the Prophet sent Umm Sulaym to look at a young woman (jariya) and told her: "Smell her 'awarid and look at her 'urqubs" (Musnad Ahmad 13424). The editors explain that the 'awarid are the teeth at the side of the mouth, between the front teeth and the molars. She was to smell them "to know her breath and the smell of her mouth, whether it was pleasant or foul". The 'urqubs are the two thick tendons above a person's heels. In al-Hakim's longer version, quoted by the editors, the Prophet wanted to marry a woman and sent another woman to look at her. The envoy climbed onto a shelf to see the girl's heels, then said "Kiss me, my daughter", and smelled her mouth while the girl kissed her. The graders disagree. The al-Risala editors grade it hadith hasan, and al-Hakim calls it sahih on Muslim's conditions. Al-Albani calls it munkar (objectionable) (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 1273), and Ibn Hajar reports that Ahmad himself found it munkar. Abu Dawud gives it without the Companion, as a mursal, in his al-Marasil, not in his Sunan.

Why this is a problem

Looking at a prospective wife is one thing. This is an inspection by proxy, and the checklist is her breath and her legs. In al-Hakim's version it is done by stealth. The inspector climbs onto a shelf to get a view of the girl's heels and asks for a kiss so she can smell the girl's breath. Nothing in the text says the girl was told she was being assessed for marriage.

The report is preserved in Ahmad's Musnad, graded hasan by its modern editors, and attached to the Prophet's own search for a wife. It does not show a man of extraordinary character. It shows a woman being inspected on his instructions.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that a man is encouraged to look at a woman before proposing, and may send a trusted woman instead. Ibn Baz: "if it is easy to send someone to look at her and learn her condition, then tell him her qualities, that suffices instead of looking". Checking someone's breath and build before a lifelong commitment is sensible, it is done by a woman, and nothing sexual is involved. The report's grading is also disputed: al-Albani rejects it, and Ibn Hajar says Ahmad did.

Why it fails

The response is right that nothing sexual is in the text and that the grading is split. But the defence is about sending someone to look. The text goes further and specifies what to check, and in al-Hakim's version, which al-Hakim and al-Dhahabi pass as sound, the checking is done by pretext. As for the grading, if Ahmad himself rejected the report, it is telling that it still stands in his Musnad, and that his modern editors grade it hasan.

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Muhammad invites Zayd b. Amr to a meal; Zayd refuses what is 'slaughtered on the stone altars' Pre-Islamic Borrowings Prophetic Character Ritual Absurdities Moderate Musnad Ahmad 1648
"Son of my brother, I do not eat what has been slaughtered on the stone altars. ... After that the Prophet was not seen eating anything that had been slaughtered on the stone altars."

What the hadith says

Sa'id b. Zayd says that the Messenger of Allah was in Mecca with Zayd b. Haritha when Zayd b. Amr b. Nufayl, Sa'id's father, passed them, and 'the two of them invited him to a meal-mat of theirs'. Zayd b. Amr answered: 'Son of my brother, I do not eat what has been slaughtered on the nusub', the stone altars of the idols. The narrator adds: 'After that the Prophet was not seen eating anything that had been slaughtered on the nusub.' Sa'id then asks the Prophet to seek forgiveness for his father, and he agrees, saying Zayd will be raised on the Day of Resurrection 'as a nation by himself'. The report is Musnad Ahmad 1648. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu da'if (weak chain): al-Mas'udi had become confused in old age and Yazid b. Harun heard from him afterwards, and Nufayl and his father are declared reliable by no one but Ibn Hibban. Al-Haythami also names al-Mas'udi's confusion. Ahmad Shakir grades the same chain isnaduhu sahih (sound).

Why this is a problem

The text does not say outright that the food on the mat was idol meat. But the scene makes no sense otherwise. Muhammad and Zayd b. Haritha are the hosts, Zayd b. Amr refuses because of how the meat was slaughtered, and the narrator closes with 'after that he was not seen eating' such meat. That line only means something if he had eaten it before. In this telling, the man who would later recite the ban on 'what is slaughtered on the nusub' (Q 5:3) learned to avoid it from a pagan-born monotheist at a shared meal, not from revelation.

The report also conflicts with the canonical version. In Bukhari 3826 (Ibn Umar) the meal is put before the Prophet 'before revelation came to him', he refuses to eat from it, and Zayd then says he does not eat what 'you slaughter on your stone altars'. The two accounts disagree over who refused the food, and a leading modern editor of the Musnad passed the chain of the one in which Muhammad is the host.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is weak, as al-Arna'ut shows, and that the sound account is Bukhari's, where the Prophet himself refuses the meal. Al-Arna'ut notes that the meaning of the hadith comes later in the Musnad from Ibn Umar with a sound chain. In any case the meeting took place before prophethood, so nothing in it touches the Prophet's conduct as a prophet.

Why it fails

The weak-chain answer is fair for the Ahmad wording, and this entry rests on it only as what the Musnad preserved and Ahmad Shakir accepted. But the defence that it happened before prophethood concedes the main point: on this account the future prophet shared a table where such meat was served, and the moral lead came from Zayd. The Bukhari version does not remove the difficulty either. It places the meal before Muhammad, while Zayd's reply is addressed to a plural 'you' who slaughter on stone altars.

The tradition kept two irreconcilable memories of one meal, and it is the later Islamic image of Muhammad that decides which one is preferred.

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Muhammad says 'He spoke the truth' to Umayya b. Abi al-Salt's verse: the sun rises only 'punished and flogged' Science Pre-Islamic Borrowings Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad Ahmad 2314
"The sun rises at the end of every night, red, its colour turning rosy; it refuses to rise for us gently, except punished and except flogged. The Prophet said: 'He spoke the truth.'"

What the hadith says

Ibn Abbas reports that the Prophet 'affirmed Umayya in something of his poetry'. Umayya b. Abi al-Salt was a pre-Islamic poet. To the couplet 'A man and a bull beneath his right foot, the eagle for the other, and a lion lying in wait', the Prophet said, 'He spoke the truth.' Then came the lines on the sunrise: the sun comes up red at the end of every night and 'refuses to rise for us gently, except punished and except flogged'. Again the Prophet said, 'He spoke the truth.' The report is Musnad Ahmad 2314. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu da'if (weak chain). Ibn Ishaq was a mudallis (a narrator who concealed his sources) who narrates it with 'from', and the versions where he says he heard it directly come only through unreliable students. Ahmad Shakir grades the chain sahih (sound).

Why this is a problem

The poem pictures the sun as an unwilling creature that has to be beaten into rising each morning. A man who claimed to speak for the Creator of the sun answered that picture with 'He spoke the truth.' The idea fits a canonical report in which the sun prostrates beneath the Throne and asks permission to rise (Bukhari 3199). Both treat sunrise as an act of obedience by a living being, not as the turning of the earth.

The poet matters too. Al-Arna'ut's note quotes Ibn Qutayba: Umayya had read the earlier scriptures and hoped to be the coming prophet himself, then rejected Muhammad out of envy. The note adds that the historians agree he died a disbeliever and that he lived long enough to lament the dead of Badr. Here, then, the Prophet confirms the cosmology of a poet who never accepted him.

The Muslim response

Muslims reply that the report is weak because of Ibn Ishaq's concealment of sources. Al-Arna'ut adds that even if Ibn Ishaq's direct hearing were proven, it would not count 'in a matter like this'. Poetry also speaks in images: a sun that rises reluctantly and red is a description of dawn, not a claim about physics.

Why it fails

Al-Arna'ut's verdict is a real objection, and this entry does not claim the Prophet certainly said it. But the report was not left on the margins. Ahmad Shakir passed the chain, and al-Arna'ut's footnote shows that Ibn Abi Shayba, al-Darimi and Abu Ya'la transmitted it. So did Ibn Khuzayma in his Kitab al-Tawhid, Abdullah b. Ahmad in al-Sunna, al-Ajurri in al-Shari'a and al-Bayhaqi in al-Asma' wa al-Sifat, four books devoted to creed. Al-Arna'ut's remark that it fails 'in a matter like this' admits that it was used on doctrinal questions.

The appeal to poetic imagery does not explain the Prophet's response. He did not praise the verse as fine poetry; he said it was true, and he said so twice.

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'Your mother is in the Fire' ... 'My mother is with your mother' Prophetic Character Hell Pre-Islamic Borrowings Moderate Musnad Ahmad 3787
"'Your mother is in the Fire.' They turned away with grief showing on their faces. He ordered them brought back, and they returned with joy showing on their faces, hoping that something had changed. He said: 'My mother is with your mother.'"

What the hadith says

Ibn Mas'ud says the two sons of Mulayka came to the Prophet. Their mother had honoured her husband, been kind to her children and generous to guests, 'except that she had buried a baby girl alive in the Jahiliyya'. He said, 'Your mother is in the Fire.' They left in grief. He had them called back, and they came hoping for good news, but he said, 'My mother is with your mother.' A hypocrite remarked that this did nothing for his own mother. An Ansari asked whether his Lord had promised him anything about her, and he replied, 'I have not asked my Lord about it, and He has not given me hope of it.' He then spoke about the Praiseworthy Station and the river flowing from al-Kawthar to his Basin. The report is Musnad Ahmad 3787. Every grader quoted calls it weak. Al-Arna'ut says isnaduhu da'if because Uthman b. Umayr is weak; Ahmad Shakir also says da'if; al-Haythami says its chain contains Uthman, who is weak. When al-Hakim called a related chain sound, al-Dhahabi replied: 'No, by Allah. Uthman was declared weak by al-Daraqutni.'

Why this is a problem

A woman who had been a good wife and mother is placed in the Fire for an act committed before Islam existed. Then, to the grieving sons who came back hoping for mercy, the Prophet groups his own mother with her. The sentence does not literally say 'in the Fire', but that is the plain sense of the exchange: the sons' hope collapses, and the hypocrite mocks the idea that he cannot even help his own mother.

The weak chain does not make the idea foreign to the canon. In Sahih Muslim 976 the Prophet asks permission to seek forgiveness for his mother and is refused. In Sahih Muslim 203 he tells a man, 'My father and your father are in the Fire.' What Ahmad adds is the Prophet's own sentence putting his mother beside a woman who killed her baby.

The Muslim response

The answer comes from al-Suyuti, quoted by al-Sindi in the al-Risala note. First, the hadith is weak. Second, it does not say his mother is in the Fire: 'with' may mean that both women are in the intermediate realm of the grave, phrased indirectly to spare the questioners distress. Third, it may have been said before he was told she is in Paradise, since 'I have not asked my Lord' shows that nothing had yet passed between him and his Lord about her.

Why it fails

The weakness is real, and the entry rests on the report only as something Ahmad, al-Bazzar and al-Tabarani preserved. Al-Suyuti's other two answers are much weaker. Everyone in the grave is 'in the grave', so 'my mother is with your mother in the grave' would comfort no one and would answer nothing the sons asked. And the third answer depends on a later notice that his mother is in Paradise, which appears nowhere in this report. Against it stand two sound reports in Sahih Muslim: he was refused permission to pray for her forgiveness, and he said his own father is in the Fire.

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Bewitched for six months: A'isha gives the length of the spell on Muhammad Magic & Occult Prophetic Character Moderate Musnad Ahmad 24347
"The Messenger of Allah remained six months thinking that he comes, and he does not come."

What the hadith says

A'isha says: 'The Messenger of Allah remained six months thinking that he comes, and he does not come.' Then two angels came. One sat at his head and the other at his feet. One asked, 'What is wrong with him?' and the other answered, 'He is bewitched,' naming Labid b. al-A'sam as the sorcerer. The spell was in a comb and hair from combing, inside the spathe of a male date palm, under a stone in the well of Dharwan. The Prophet woke and told A'isha that Allah had answered what he had asked about. He had the charm brought out of the well and said its water looked like henna-steep and its palm heads like devils' heads. The report is Musnad Ahmad 24347, and the chain is graded sound three times: al-Arna'ut (isnaduhu sahih, all reliable), Ibn Hajar (isnaduhu sahih, Fath al-Bari 10/226) and al-Albani (isnaduhu sahih, al-Silsila al-Sahiha 6/619). Al-Sindi explains 'he comes' as being able to go in to his wives.

Why this is a problem

The bewitchment itself is canonical. Bukhari 5763 says he imagined 'he had done a thing that he had not really done', and Bukhari 5765 that he thought he had slept with his wives when he had not. Neither gives a length of time, and readers can treat the episode as brief. Ahmad's sound report removes that option: half a year.

For six months, on this report, a sorcerer's charm in a well distorted what the Messenger of Allah believed about his own actions. The Qur'an treats 'a man bewitched' as the slander of his enemies: 'the wrongdoers say, "You follow only a man bewitched"' (Q 25:8). Here the slander comes true for half a year, and nothing in the report marks off which of his words and acts in that time were affected.

The Muslim response

The usual Muslim answer is that the sorcery touched only his body and private life, never revelation or his teaching. Prophets fall ill like other people, and al-Sindi's gloss, matching Bukhari 5765, limits the effect to marital relations. Allah then exposed the spell and cured him.

Why it fails

The limit is a gloss. The wording here is open ('he comes, and he does not come'), and the canonical Bukhari 5763 is general: he imagined he had done things he had not done. A man who, on these reports taken together, cannot trust his memory of his own deeds for six months cannot be the one to certify that the confusion never reached his teaching, and the defence offers no other witness. With three graders calling the chain sound, the six months cannot be dismissed as a weak addition.

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The Angel of Death 'used to come to people openly' until Moses gouged out his eye Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Ahmad 10904
"The Angel of Death used to come to people openly. He came to Moses, who slapped him and gouged out his eye ... Allah restored his eye to him, and from then on he came to people in secret."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra relates from the Prophet that 'the Angel of Death used to come to people openly'. He came to Moses, who slapped him and gouged out his eye. The angel complained to his Lord: 'Your servant Moses has gouged out my eye; were it not for his honour with You, I would have been harsh with him.' Allah sent him back with an offer: Moses could put his hand on the hide of a bull and have a year for every hair it covered. Moses asked, 'What comes after that?' 'Death.' 'Then now.' The angel took his soul. One of Ahmad's two teachers, Yunus, adds: 'Allah restored his eye to him, and from then on he came to people in secret.' The report is Musnad Ahmad 10904. Al-Arna'ut says its men are those of the Sahih, but its opening line, 'the Angel of Death used to come to people openly', is munkar (objectionable). Only Ammar b. Abi Ammar has it, and only Hammad b. Salama from him, and both have some objectionable reports; it is also disputed whether the story is the Prophet's words or Abu Hurayra's. Al-Haythami says its men are those of the Sahih, and al-Hakim called it sound on Muslim's condition.

Why this is a problem

The slap and the lost eye are already in Bukhari and Muslim. Ahmad's version adds an origin story. People can no longer see death coming because a prophet once injured the angel who brings it. An angel has an eye that can be knocked out, he complains to God about it, God repairs it, and afterwards the angel comes to people in secret. A question about why death comes unseen is answered with a folk tale about an injured spirit, and the Musnad presents that tale as words of the Prophet.

The Muslim response

Muslims can point to al-Arna'ut himself: the 'openly ... in secret' frame is the munkar part, carried by one narrator and disputed as to whether it goes back to the Prophet at all. For the slap, which is canonical, the classical answer is that the angel came to Moses in human form, unrecognised, and Moses struck what looked like an intruder.

Why it fails

For the frame, the critics' objection largely holds, which is why this entry is rated basic. Its value is as evidence of what circulated. Trustworthy narrators of the Sahih passed the frame on, al-Hakim graded it sound, and al-Haythami raised no objection to its men.

The human-form answer also sits awkwardly with this version. If the Angel of Death 'used to come to people openly' before Moses, he was a visible figure who did not need to be recognised by an angelic shape. And Moses' reply, 'then now', shows he understood exactly who was offering him death.

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'A cursed man will come in to you': the man who walked in was al-Hakam, Marwan's father Prophetic Character Governance Moderate Musnad Ahmad 6520
"'A cursed man will certainly come in to you.' By Allah, I remained afraid, watching whoever came in and went out, until so-and-so came in, meaning al-Hakam."

What the hadith says

Abdullah b. Amr b. al-As says they were sitting with the Prophet while his own father, Amr b. al-As, had gone to put on his clothes and join him. The Prophet said, 'A cursed man will certainly come in to you.' Abdullah stayed afraid, watching everyone who came in and went out, in case it was his father, 'until so-and-so came in'. The text glosses the name: 'meaning al-Hakam'. The report is Musnad Ahmad 6520. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu sahih 'ala shart Muslim (a sound chain meeting Muslim's conditions), and Ahmad Shakir also calls the chain sound. The editors identify the man as al-Hakam b. Abi al-As of Umayya, the uncle of Uthman b. Affan and the father of Marwan. They say he accepted Islam at the conquest of Mecca and had 'the slightest share of companionship'. The Prophet expelled him from Medina to Ta'if, and he stayed there until Uthman brought him back during his caliphate.

Why this is a problem

The Prophet announces in advance that 'a cursed man' is about to walk in, and the man who does so, on the text's own gloss, is a Companion by the standard Sunni definition. He was the uncle of the third caliph, and his son Marwan later became caliph himself. The report does not say why al-Hakam was cursed, and it does not curse Marwan or the Umayyads. But on the editors' own account, the man the Prophet called cursed and sent away from Medina was brought back by Uthman.

This is a sound report in the Musnad, and the gloss 'meaning al-Hakam' is part of its transmitted text. The name was first hidden behind 'so-and-so', and a transmitter then supplied it.

The Muslim response

No dedicated Muslim reply was found. The al-Risala footnote gives only the background and points readers to the biographical dictionaries. The natural answer is that the curse concerned one man for a specific reason, that al-Hakam's late and minimal companionship and his expulsion show he was a known exception, and that 'meaning al-Hakam' is a narrator's explanation, not the Prophet's words.

Why it fails

The answer concedes the substance. A sound report preserves the Prophet calling a particular Companion 'cursed'. The editors record that the Prophet expelled him, and that Uthman, the caliph whom Sunni Muslims revere as rightly guided, reversed the expulsion and brought the man back to Medina. Calling the gloss a narrator's explanation does not help either, because no other identification is offered and the editors themselves accept al-Hakam.

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Drinking standing: 'Vomit it ... one worse than a cat has drunk with you: Satan' Ritual Absurdities Strange / Obscure Animals Basic Musnad Ahmad 8003
"'Vomit it.' He said: 'Why?' He said: 'Would it please you for a cat to drink with you?' He said: 'No.' He said: 'Then one worse than it has drunk with you: Satan.'"

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra says the Prophet saw a man drinking while standing and told him, 'Vomit it.' The man asked why. 'Would it please you for a cat to drink with you?' 'No.' 'Then one worse than it has drunk with you: Satan.' The report is Musnad Ahmad 8003, and al-Darimi, al-Bazzar and al-Tahawi also record it. Al-Arna'ut calls it gharib (odd): only Shu'ba narrates from Abu Ziyad al-Tahhan, whom al-Dhahabi calls 'not known', and 'its oddness is evident in its text'. Ibn Hajar grades the same wording sahih bi-majmu' turuqihi (sound through its combined routes).

Why this is a problem

The order to vomit is canonical. Sahih Muslim 2026 says: 'None of you should drink while standing; and if anyone forgets, he must vomit.' Ahmad's report supplies the reason: Satan drinks along with a man who drinks standing, a worse companion than a cat. A matter of posture becomes a matter of demonic contamination, cured by making yourself sick.

Yet Bukhari 5615 has Ali drinking standing and saying he had seen the Prophet do the same. Either Satan shared the Prophet's drink too, or the rule and its reason do not hold.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer with al-Arna'ut's own verdict: the report is odd, from a barely known narrator, and its strangeness shows in its wording. The mainstream legal view, based on the reports of the Prophet drinking standing, is that drinking standing is at most disliked, not forbidden.

Why it fails

The 'odd' verdict is one critic's view. Ibn Hajar, the leading commentator on Bukhari, judged this exact wording, cat and Satan included, sound through its routes. And the 'at most disliked' position has to explain away a command in Sahih Muslim to induce vomiting, which is a strange remedy for a mere dislike. Muslim scholarship is left holding a sound command, a sound counter-example and a disputed explanation involving Satan.

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'When the ghouls take on shapes for you, hasten with the call to prayer', against 'There is no ghoul' Magic & Occult Contradictions Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Ahmad 14277
"Keep to night travel, for the earth is folded up at night; and when the ghouls take on shapes for you, hasten with the call to prayer."

What the hadith says

Jabir b. Abdullah relates the Prophet's advice to travellers. In fertile country, give the camels their due. In drought, press on. 'Keep to night travel, for the earth is folded up at night; and when the ghouls take on shapes for you, hasten with the call to prayer.' Do not pray or camp on the middle of the road, which is the haunt of snakes and beasts. The report is Musnad Ahmad 14277. Al-Arna'ut grades it sahih li-ghayrihi (sound through supporting reports) except the ghoul line. Its narrators are those of the Sahih, but al-Hasan al-Basri did not hear from Jabir. Ibn Majah 329 has only the closing part about the roads.

Why this is a problem

Sahih Muslim states: 'There is no transitive disease, no ill omen, no ghoul' (Muslim 2222a). Abu Dawud 3913 says simply: 'There is no ghoul.' Ahmad's report assumes the opposite. Ghouls exist, they take on shapes before travellers, and the remedy is to hasten with the call to prayer.

Nor is this one stray line. Al-Arna'ut's note lists the same wording in Abd al-Razzaq, Ibn Khuzayma and Ibn al-Sunni's Amal al-Yawm wa al-Layla (a manual of daily devotions), and a second version in al-Bazzar from al-Hasan from Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas: the Prophet 'commanded us, when the ghouls take on shapes for us, to call the adhan'. The tradition carried both 'there is no ghoul' and a ritual remedy against ghouls.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the ghoul line is the part al-Arna'ut excludes, so it cannot be set against the sound 'no ghoul' hadith. Scholars also commonly read 'no ghoul' as denying the Arab belief that ghouls change shape and lead travellers astray, not the existence of jinn as such.

Why it fails

The chain objection is fair. The line rests on al-Hasan, who did not hear Jabir, and in the al-Bazzar version on al-Hasan again, who, al-Bazzar says, is not known to have heard anything from Sa'd. That is why the entry is rated basic. But the harmonisation has a cost: it works only if this line is false, because the line affirms exactly what the harmonisation says 'no ghoul' denies, ghouls changing shape. What remains is what the tradition preserved. Hadith compilers, including a devotional manual, passed on an anti-ghoul ritual alongside a sound denial that ghouls exist.

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Muhammad withholds a man's pledge of allegiance until his amulet is cut off Magic & Occult Ritual Absurdities Contradictions Basic Musnad Ahmad 17422
"They said: 'Messenger of Allah, you took the pledge of nine and left this one?' He said: 'He has an amulet on him.' He put in his hand and cut it off, then took his pledge, and said: 'Whoever hangs an amulet has committed shirk.'"

What the hadith says

Uqba b. Amir al-Juhani says a group came to the Prophet. He accepted the pledge of nine of them and held back from one. When they asked why, he said, 'He has an amulet on him.' He put his hand in, cut it off, then took the man's pledge and said, 'Whoever hangs an amulet has committed shirk.' The report is Musnad Ahmad 17422. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu qawi (strong chain), and al-Albani grades the saying 'Whoever hangs an amulet has committed shirk' isnaduhu sahih (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 492). Al-Arna'ut notes that al-Tabarani's version lacks that final sentence.

Why this is a problem

The site already covers the canonical condemnation: Abu Dawud 3883 lists 'spells, charms and love-potions' as polytheism. Ahmad adds a scene that goes further. Wearing an amulet was enough for the Prophet to withhold a man's pledge of allegiance until the object was physically cut off him.

In the report the Prophet does not ask what the amulet contained or what it was for. He refused the pledge because the man was wearing one, and then made a general rule: whoever hangs an amulet has committed shirk, the sin of which the Qur'an says 'Allah does not forgive that partners be associated with Him' (Q 4:48). Yet amulets are common across the Muslim world, including ones holding Qur'anic verses, and some scholars permit those.

The Muslim response

The usual Muslim answer is that the ban targets pagan charms: objects people relied on in place of Allah, or that contained unknown words. A written Qur'anic verse is Allah's own speech, so wearing one is a form of seeking His protection, not shirk. On this reading, the man in the story wore a pre-Islamic charm.

Why it fails

Nothing in the report supports that limit. The Prophet judged by the bare fact of the amulet, without inspecting it, and his rule is worded for every case: 'whoever hangs an amulet'. The exception for Qur'anic amulets comes from later scholars, not from this text, and on a sound report it amounts to permitting what the Prophet treated as a bar to accepting a man's pledge.

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'The evil eye is real, and Satan and the envy of the son of Adam are present with it' Magic & Occult Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Ahmad 9668
"The evil eye is real, and Satan and the envy of the son of Adam are present with it."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra relates that the Prophet said: 'The evil eye is real, and Satan and the envy of the son of Adam are present with it.' The report is Musnad Ahmad 9668. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu munqati' (broken chain), because Makhul did not hear from Abu Hurayra. Only 'the evil eye is real' is sound, from another route. Al-Sindi, quoted in the same note, explains 'present with it' as 'alongside it', and observes that al-Suyuti's al-Jami' al-Saghir and al-Haythami's Majma' al-Zawa'id carry the wording 'Satan attends it'.

Why this is a problem

'The evil eye is real' is canonical: Sahih Muslim 2188 adds that 'if anything would precede the destiny it would be the influence of an evil eye'. The site already covers that, and another Other-hadith entry records the claim that most of the community die of it. What Ahmad's wording adds is the mechanism. The harm of an envious glance comes with Satan attending it.

This turns a social emotion into a spiritual hazard. Envy is no longer only a sin of the person who feels it. It becomes a channel for Satan to injure the person envied, and so a reason for protective rituals against other people's looks.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is broken, as al-Arna'ut says, so the clause about Satan and envy is not established. Only 'the evil eye is real' is sound, and that clause is already accepted on canonical authority.

Why it fails

The response is correct about the chain, and this entry is rated basic. The point is what the tradition did with it. Al-Sindi's note shows that the Satan wording was carried into al-Suyuti's al-Jami' al-Saghir and al-Haythami's Majma' al-Zawa'id, two of the most widely used later reference collections. And the canonical core already says that the evil eye is a real force that could almost outrun divine decree. Adding Satan to it explains an existing belief rather than introducing a strange new one.

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Ibn Mas'ud stops his sermon to kill a snake: 'as though he killed a polytheist whose blood had become lawful' Animals Disbelievers Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Ahmad 3746
"Whoever kills a snake, it is as though he killed a polytheist man whose blood had become lawful."

What the hadith says

Abu al-Ahwas al-Jushami says that one day, while Ibn Mas'ud was preaching, a snake appeared walking along the wall. Ibn Mas'ud broke off his sermon and struck it with his stick until he had killed it. Then he said he had heard the Messenger of Allah say: 'Whoever kills a snake, it is as though he killed a polytheist man whose blood had become lawful.' The report is Musnad Ahmad 3746. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu da'if marfu'an: weak as a saying of the Prophet, because Abu al-A'yan al-Abdi was declared weak by Ibn Ma'in and unknown by Abu Hatim, and Ibn Hibban said he cannot be relied on. Al-Arna'ut adds that the saying is recorded as Ibn Mas'ud's own words with a sound chain.

Why this is a problem

The comparison only works if killing a polytheist 'whose blood has become lawful' is a recognised good deed, the standard against which the merit of killing a snake can be measured. The saying does not command anyone to kill polytheists. It assumes a class of people whose killing is plainly meritorious, defined by their religion, and uses them as the measure.

Even if the Prophet never said it, al-Arna'ut notes that the saying is recorded as Ibn Mas'ud's own words with a sound chain: a senior Companion reached for this comparison. It shows how naturally the killing of a lawful-blood polytheist served as a benchmark of merit in the first generation. Abu Dawud 5249 (Ibn Mas'ud, graded sahih by al-Albani) gives the canonical command: 'Kill all the snakes.'

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the hadith is weak as a prophetic saying, as al-Arna'ut shows. As Ibn Mas'ud's words it is a simile about the reward for removing a danger, not a ruling on non-Muslims. The phrase 'whose blood had become lawful' itself limits the comparison to someone already liable to death by law, not polytheists in general.

Why it fails

The chain objection is correct, which is why the entry is rated basic. But the 'it is only a simile' answer misses the point. A simile shows what its audience takes for granted. For a senior Companion, killing a polytheist whose blood had become lawful was a self-evident good, as easy to approve as killing a snake. The legal qualifier says when such killing is permitted; it does not soften the comparison.

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A'isha swears the Prophet 'never said' that omens lie in the house, the woman and the horse Pre-Islamic Borrowings Contradictions Women Moderate Musnad Ahmad 26034
"By Him who sent down the Furqan upon Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah never said it at all. He only said: 'The people of the Jahiliyya used to draw omens from that.'"

What the hadith says

Abu Hassan al-A'raj says two men of Banu Amir came to A'isha and told her that Abu Hurayra was narrating from the Prophet: 'Ill omen is in the house, the woman and the horse.' She grew so angry that 'one part of her flew into the sky and one part into the earth', an idiom for rage. She said: 'By Him who sent down the Furqan upon Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah never said it at all. He only said: "The people of the Jahiliyya used to draw omens from that."' The report is Musnad Ahmad 26034, and al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu sahih 'ala shart Muslim (a sound chain meeting Muslim's conditions). Ahmad records the same denial twice more (25168, 26088).

Why this is a problem

The saying A'isha denied under oath is in the canon, and not only through Abu Hurayra. Bukhari 5772 has Ibn Umar narrate: 'There is neither contagion nor tiyara, and an evil omen is only in three: a horse, a woman and a house.' A'isha's sound testimony is that this is a garbled report: the Prophet was describing a pagan superstition, and someone passed on the description as his own teaching.

Either the Prophet's wife was wrong about what he taught on a matter that concerns every Muslim woman, or the most authoritative hadith collection preserves a pre-Islamic superstition about women as prophetic teaching. A tradition that claims to have carefully transmitted the Prophet's words could not settle this between two leading Companions.

The Muslim response

Al-Arna'ut's note gives the classical harmonisation. Al-Tahawi recognised the clash, and Muslim records a wording from Ibn Umar that is conditional: 'If there is bad luck in anything, it is the horse, the abode and the woman' (Muslim 2225f). On this reading the Prophet never affirmed omens. He said only that if they existed anywhere, it would be there. The same note cites al-Tayalisi's version, in which A'isha says Abu Hurayra came in at the end of a sentence about what 'the Jews' say and heard only its end.

Why it fails

The conditional wording is one transmission among several. Bukhari 5772 is unconditional: an evil omen 'is only in three'. Harmonising by choosing the softest wording does not answer A'isha. She did not say the saying was misunderstood; she swore that the Prophet 'never said it at all'. The al-Tayalisi variant, which comes through Makhul (who did not hear A'isha, as al-Arna'ut notes), only moves the source of the superstition from the pagan Arabs to the Jews. Both versions make it someone else's belief, which canonical Bukhari still attributes to the Prophet.

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A wolf sits on its tail and rebukes a shepherd in human speech; Muhammad: 'He spoke the truth' Animals Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Ahmad 11792
"The wolf squatted on its tail and said: 'Do you not fear Allah? You snatch from me provision that Allah drove to me.' ... 'Shall I not tell you of something more amazing than that? Muhammad in Yathrib is telling people the news of what has gone before.'"

What the hadith says

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri says a wolf seized a sheep. The shepherd chased it and took the sheep back, and the wolf squatted on its tail and said: 'Do you not fear Allah? You snatch from me provision that Allah drove to me.' The shepherd marvelled at a wolf on its tail 'speaking to me with human speech'. The wolf replied that something more amazing was happening: Muhammad in Yathrib was telling people the news of the past. The shepherd drove his flock into Medina and told the Prophet, who had the call 'prayer gathers [you]' made and told the shepherd to repeat his story to the people. The Prophet then said: 'He spoke the truth. By Him in whose hand is my soul, the Hour will not come until beasts of prey speak to humans, and the tip of a man's whip and the strap of his sandal speak to him, and his thigh tells him what his family did after him.' The report is Musnad Ahmad 11792. Al-Arna'ut says its narrators are trustworthy and those of the Sahih. His note quotes al-Hakim calling it sound on Muslim's conditions. Tirmidhi 2181 has the same chain from al-Qasim b. al-Fadl onward but only the closing saying, without the wolf.

Why this is a problem

A wild animal speaks in human speech, preaches Islamic theology to a shepherd ('provision that Allah drove to me') and announces the new prophet in Yathrib. The prophet it announces then confirms the story in public: 'He spoke the truth.' The only witness to the miracle is the shepherd, and the only guarantee of the shepherd's story is the man the story was told to promote.

The closing prophecy adds whip-tips, sandal-straps and a man's own thigh that will report what his family did in his absence. Tirmidhi kept that saying but dropped the wolf. Ahmad, al-Hakim and the 'proofs of prophethood' collections of Abu Nu'aym and al-Bayhaqi kept the whole story.

The Muslim response

Muslims accept the report as a sign of prophethood, and that is why it appears in the Dala'il al-Nubuwwa works. Allah is able to make an animal speak. The Qur'an itself has Solomon understand an ant and a hoopoe, and the chain here is made up of trustworthy narrators.

Why it fails

The question is not whether Allah could make a wolf speak but what evidence there is that one did. The report rests on one unnamed shepherd, and the Prophet's 'He spoke the truth' is the only check on him, so the claim is circular. That a sound-looking chain can carry it, and that al-Hakim graded it sound, says more about the limits of chain criticism than about wolves. This entry is rated basic: it records the kind of wonder story the hadith tradition passed down and certified, not a contradiction.

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Chest split open 'at ten years and some months': rancour and envy pulled out like a clot Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Ahmad 21261 (additions of Abdullah b. Ahmad)
"I was in a desert, a boy of ten years and some months ... One of them said to his companion, 'Split open his chest.' ... He said to him, 'Take out the rancour and the envy.' So he took out something shaped like a clot, then cast it away. Then he said to him, 'Put in tenderness and mercy,' and there was something like what he had taken out, resembling silver."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra asks the Prophet what he first saw of prophethood. Muhammad sits up and answers that he was in a desert, aged 'ten years and some months', when he heard a voice above his head: one man asked another, 'Is it him?' Two men with faces, scents and clothes unlike any creature's took him by the arms, laid him down and split his chest open 'without blood or pain'. One told the other to take out 'the rancour and the envy', which came out like a clot and was thrown away, and to put in 'tenderness and mercy', which looked like silver. Then he shook the boy's right big toe and said, 'Go, and be safe.' The report is not Ahmad's own: it opens 'Abdullah narrated to us', which marks it as one of the additions (zawa'id) of his son Abdullah b. Ahmad, and it is numbered 21261. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut and his co-editors grade it isnaduhu da'if (weak chain): Muhammad b. Mu'adh and his father Mu'adh are unknown. They quote Ali b. al-Madini: 'a Medinan hadith, and its chain is entirely unknown; we know neither Muhammad nor his father nor his grandfather.'

Why this is a problem

The chest-opening itself is canonical. In Sahih Muslim 162 (from Anas), Gabriel comes while the boy is playing with other boys, splits his chest, takes out the heart and removes a clot: 'That was Satan's share of you.' He washes it in a golden basin with Zamzam water, the boys run to his nurse crying that Muhammad has been killed, and Anas says he saw the stitch marks on the Prophet's chest. Abdullah b. Ahmad's report tells a different scene: two unnamed men instead of Gabriel, a lone boy in the desert aged over ten, a chest split 'without blood or pain', and the clot that is taken out named differently. In Muslim it is 'Satan's share'; here it is 'rancour and envy', and 'tenderness and mercy' are put back in as a silvery substance.

Both versions turn moral character into matter that can be cut out and replaced. If envy is a lump that angels can extract, the Prophet's famous gentleness was installed in him rather than achieved. The variant shows the story gaining new details as it was retold.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this particular report carries no weight: its narrators are unknown, as al-Arna'ut and Ali b. al-Madini say. The same note adds that the chest-opening 'is established from more than one Companion', so the event rests on sound reports such as Muslim's, not on this one. What the angels removed and inserted belongs to the unseen, and the unseen may be shown in physical form, as the clot in Muslim also is.

Why it fails

On the chain the response is right, which is why this entry is rated Basic. But its own defence concedes the larger point: the editors accept the surgery as historical and dispute only this version's details. The tradition also kept this one. The editors list it through Abdullah b. Ahmad in Ibn Asakir's history and al-Diya' al-Maqdisi's al-Mukhtara, and in Abu Nu'aym's Dala'il al-Nubuwwa (Proofs of Prophethood).

Calling the vices 'unseen realities' does not remove the problem; it restates it. In every version the Prophet's inner character is changed by an operation done to him as a child, and the versions disagree about who did it, when, and what was taken out.

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Ibn Mas'ud scraped the last two surahs out of his codices: 'They are not from the Book of Allah' Scripture Integrity Strong Musnad Ahmad 21188
"Abdullah used to scrape the Mu'awwidhatayn out of his codices and say: They are not from the Book of Allah."

What the hadith says

This is a report about the Companion Abdullah b. Mas'ud, not a saying of the Prophet. The Successor Abd al-Rahman b. Yazid al-Nakha'i says that Ibn Mas'ud used to scrape (yahukku) the Mu'awwidhatayn, Suras 113 and 114, out of his copies of the Qur'an and say that they were not part of the Book of Allah. Musnad Ahmad 21188 comes from the additions of Ahmad's son Abdullah; al-Arna'ut et al. grade it isnaduhu sahih (sound chain), its men 'trustworthy, men of the Sahih', and al-Haythami likewise says Abdullah's narrators are men of the Sahih. The next report, 21189, is Ahmad's own, through Sufyan b. Uyayna: Zirr b. Hubaysh tells Ubayy b. Ka'b, 'Your brother scrapes them out of the codex.' Ubayy replies that he asked the Prophet, who said, 'It was said to me, so I said,' and 'we say as the Messenger of Allah said'. The editors grade it sound on the conditions of al-Bukhari and Muslim.

Why this is a problem

Al-Bukhari has the same exchange through the same Sufyan b. Uyayna, but with the claim veiled: Zirr says only that 'your brother Ibn Mas'ud says such-and-such' (Bukhari 4977). The Musnad says in plain words what the canonical version hides. The man doing this was no outsider. Bukhari 3758 names Ibn Mas'ud first among the four men from whom the Prophet told Muslims to learn the Qur'an. One of the Qur'an's own appointed teachers physically removed two surahs from his codices and denied that they were scripture.

The editors' note lists more versions in the same vein: in one (al-Tabarani 9151, whose narrator Muhammad b. Musa al-Harashi they call layyin, soft) he says, 'Do not mix into the Qur'an what is not in it; they are only two protective formulas the Prophet used.' The claim that the Qur'an was transmitted without disagreement cannot survive a sound report that a leading Companion rejected two of its 114 surahs.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer in several ways, collected in this commentary on Bukhari 4976. Al-Nawawi reports consensus that both surahs are Qur'an. Some scholars deny the attribution, noting that the recitation chains of Asim, Hamza and al-Kisa'i go back through Ibn Mas'ud and include the two surahs. Others, citing Ibn Kathir, say he retracted, or hold that he never denied them and only declined to write them down without the Prophet's permission. The Risala text itself prints Sufyan's explanation: Ibn Mas'ud saw the Prophet use the two surahs to seek protection for al-Hasan and al-Husayn and never heard him recite them in prayer, 'so he thought they were two protective formulas and held to his opinion, while the others verified that they were Qur'an and put them in it.'

Why it fails

Denying the attribution means rejecting chains that the Musnad's own editors grade sound on the conditions of al-Bukhari and Muslim, and that al-Bukhari himself carries in veiled form. The 'he only declined to write them' reading contradicts the text, which has him scraping them out and saying 'they are not from the Book of Allah'. Neither Ahmad's text nor the editors' note records any retraction.

Sufyan's explanation, which the editors print from two of their manuscripts, gives the case away. It admits that Ibn Mas'ud, after years at the Prophet's side, could not tell whether two surahs were revealed scripture or protective spells, and that he kept to his view. Consensus came afterwards, among the others. That is a disagreement over what belongs in the Qur'an among the people who taught it.

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After the Shout 'your Lord goes about the earth'; Muhammad's polytheist kin are 'dragged on your face' in the Fire Allah's Character Disbelievers Hell Eschatology Moderate Musnad Ahmad 16206 (additions of Abdullah b. Ahmad)
"Then the Shout is sent ... it leaves nothing on the face of the earth that does not die, and the angels who are with your Lord. Then your Lord came to be going about the earth, and the lands were empty around Him ... And my own family, by the life of Allah: whatever grave of an Amiri or a Qurayshi polytheist you come to, say: Muhammad sent me to you with news that will grieve you: you are dragged on your face and your belly in the Fire."

What the hadith says

Laqit b. Amir (Abu Razin al-Uqayli) comes to the Prophet as a delegate and questions the Prophet at length. Allah, he is told, looks down on people in drought and despair 'and keeps laughing, knowing that your relief is near'. After the Prophet's death 'the Shout' kills everything, and then 'your Lord came to be going about the earth' (manuscripts read yatufu or yutifu) while the lands lay empty, before rain from the Throne splits the graves. At the judgement 'your Lord takes a handful of water in His hand' and sprinkles it on the people. Laqit asks how all mankind can see Him 'when He is a single person', and is told: as you all see the sun and moon. When a Qurayshi says Laqit's own father is in the Fire, Laqit asks, 'And your family?' The answer is the graves passage above. This is an addition of Abdullah b. Ahmad, who received it in writing; it is not Ahmad's own narration. Al-Arna'ut et al. grade it isnaduhu da'if, musalsal bi-l-majahil (weak, a chain of unknown narrators) and speak of 'its severe weakness, its strangeness and the munkar character of some of its wording'. Al-Albani also grades the chain weak.

Why this is a problem

The picture of God here is strikingly physical. He goes about an emptied earth, scoops water in His hand, keeps laughing, and is called 'a single person' who is seen the way the sun and moon are seen, and the Prophet corrects none of it. Of all this, the canonical books keep only the laughing exchange (Ibn Majah 181, itself graded weak): 'We shall not lack good from a Lord who laughs.' Abu Dawud 3266 records the same delegation through the same chain but quotes only the oath 'By the life of your God'.

The ending is harsher still. Asked about those who died before Islam, the Prophet includes 'my own family' and tells Laqit to go to any polytheist's grave of his tribe or of Quraysh and announce that its occupant is being dragged face-down in the Fire. Laqit objects that they knew no other way and 'thought they were doing right'. The answer is that Allah sent a prophet 'at the end of every seven nations', so anyone who disobeyed was astray.

The Muslim response

Muslims reply that the report carries no doctrine. Its chain is made up of unknown narrators, al-Arna'ut calls parts of its wording munkar (objectionable), and even al-Albani grades the chain weak. Ahmad did not narrate it himself, and what is sound in it, such as Allah's laughing, is found elsewhere.

Why it fails

The weakness is real, and the entry does not claim that Muslims must believe this report. What matters is where it was kept. Abdullah b. Ahmad put it into his father's Musnad and into his creed manual al-Sunna (no. 951), and Ibn Abi Asim also has it in his al-Sunna (nos. 524 and 636), as the editors' note records. Those are books written to teach correct belief about God's attributes. The same note rebukes a modern critic for using it, in al-Silsila al-Sahiha (2810), to strengthen another report, calling that 'a laxity the experts do not accept'.

So a report the editors call severely weak and objectionable was carried in creed manuals and cited by a modern critic. Its grim message to the graves of one's own ancestors stands in the tradition's record whatever its grade.

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'The city of Heraclius will be conquered first': Rome is still waiting Eschatology Warfare & Jihad Moderate Musnad Ahmad 6645
"Which of the two cities will be conquered first, Constantinople or Rome? The Messenger of Allah said: The city of Heraclius will be conquered first, meaning Constantinople."

What the hadith says

The Successor Abu Qabil says that Abdullah b. Amr b. al-As was asked which city would be conquered first, Constantinople or Rome (Rumiyya). Abdullah called for a chest with rings, took out a written sheet, and said that while they were sitting around the Prophet writing, he was asked the same question and answered, 'The city of Heraclius will be conquered first.' The words 'meaning Constantinople' are a narrator's gloss. The graders split. Al-Arna'ut et al. say isnaduhu da'if (weak chain): Yahya b. Ayyub is disputed, and Ibn Hajar calls Abu Qabil weak 'because he transmitted a great deal from the old books'. They note, with an exclamation mark, that al-Hakim called it sound and al-Dhahabi agreed. Ahmad Shakir grades the chain sound, al-Albani includes it in al-Silsila al-Sahiha (no. 4), and al-Hakim calls it 'sound in chain'.

Why this is a problem

The question assumes that both cities will fall to the Muslims, and the Prophet does not correct it: he only says which comes first. Constantinople fell to Mehmed II in 1453. Rome never has. On the reading of the graders who accept the report, a prophecy declared sound by al-Albani and Ahmad Shakir has been half-fulfilled for more than five centuries and left open for the rest.

It is also the sort of saying that drives its own fulfilment. Constantinople was besieged by Maslama in 717 to 718 and taken in 1453, and another report in the Musnad (18957) shows an Umayyad commander asking for a Constantinople hadith before he set out. A promise of conquest that a commander sought out before his campaign works as a war aim, and its 'fulfilment' came from Muslim armies setting out to bring it about.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the conquest of Rome is a sign of the Hour that is still to come. The hadith encyclopedia dorar.net files this very report under the 'conquest of Rome' among the end-time signs. An unfulfilled prophecy is not a failed one, and the first half came true exactly as stated. Those who follow al-Risala's weak grading need not rely on it at all.

Why it fails

A prediction with no date can never be shown false, which is exactly why it proves nothing. The half that came true is the half Muslim armies spent centuries trying to bring about. The half that did not is postponed to the end of the world. Nothing in the text points to the end times; the question was put as a practical one about two real cities.

The grading escape does not work for most Muslims either. Two leading modern graders, al-Albani and Ahmad Shakir, accept it as sound. Anyone who follows them is left holding a sound prophecy that has stayed open since the 7th century.

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'What an excellent commander is its commander': the Constantinople saying told to Maslama before his campaign Eschatology Warfare & Jihad Basic Musnad Ahmad 18957
"Constantinople will surely be conquered, and what an excellent commander its commander will be, and what an excellent army that army will be. He said: Then Maslama b. Abd al-Malik called me and asked me, and I told him the hadith, and he raided Constantinople."

What the hadith says

Abdullah b. Bishr al-Khath'ami reports from his father Bishr, counted as a Companion, that the Prophet said Constantinople would surely be conquered and praised its future commander and army. The report closes with the narrator's note that the Umayyad prince Maslama b. Abd al-Malik summoned him, asked him about it, heard the hadith, 'and raided Constantinople'. It is Musnad Ahmad 18957, which Abdullah b. Ahmad says he also heard directly from Ahmad's own teacher. Al-Arna'ut et al. grade it isnaduhu da'if (weak chain): Abdullah b. Bishr is unknown, only one man narrates from him, and the sources disagree over his name and his father's. Al-Haythami says its narrators are trustworthy. The saying is not in the six canonical books.

Why this is a problem

The text itself shows the hadith at work as a recruiting promise. A prince of the ruling dynasty asks for the prophecy, hears that the conquering commander will be 'excellent', and launches his campaign. The siege that followed, led by Maslama in 717 to 718, failed: according to the standard account, 'the Arabs were forced to lift the siege on 15 August 718.' The first commander known to have acted on the promise was not the one it described.

After that failure the 'excellent commander' had to be someone else: later Mehmed II, or a leader still to come at the end of time. A saying that praises whoever eventually wins works as an incentive to keep fighting, not as a prediction.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the hadith never named Maslama. Shaykh Jamir Meah of SeekersGuidance writes that 'it is not possible to conclusively identify one historical event as being the fulfilment of the promise': it could refer to Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453, or to a future conquest at the time of the Mahdi and Jesus, which he finds 'very viable'. In any case al-Risala's editors grade the chain weak.

Why it fails

The weak grading is fair, and this entry is rated Basic for that reason. The point is what the report records, not that Muslims must believe it. The tradition kept a hadith that a prince used to justify a war, together with his use of it, and the war it sent him to failed.

The SeekersGuidance answer concedes that no event can be confidently named as the fulfilment, even after 1453. A promise that cannot be tied to the one conquest that actually happened, and is now pushed toward the end of time, has stopped predicting anything.

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Khadija's two dead children 'are in the Fire': 'If you saw their place, you would hate them' Disbelievers Hell Moderate Musnad Ahmad 1131 (additions of Abdullah b. Ahmad)
"They are both in the Fire ... If you saw their place, you would hate them ... The believers and their children are in Paradise, and the polytheists and their children are in the Fire."

What the hadith says

Ali b. Abi Talib says that Khadija asked the Prophet about two children of hers who had died in the Jahiliyya, the time before Islam. He said, 'They are both in the Fire.' When he saw the distress in her face he said, 'If you saw their place, you would hate them.' She asked about her children by him; they are in Paradise. He then stated the general rule, that believers and their children are in Paradise and polytheists and their children in the Fire, and recited Q52:21. The report is an addition of Abdullah b. Ahmad (Musnad Ahmad 1131). Al-Arna'ut et al. grade it isnaduhu da'if (weak chain) because Muhammad b. Uthman is unknown. They quote al-Dhahabi, who says nobody knows who he is and that 'he has a munkar report', meaning this one, and Ibn al-Jawzi: 'no hadith about punishing children is sound.' Al-Haythami says he did not know the man but the rest are men of the Sahih.

Why this is a problem

The children are condemned for their parents' religion, and a grieving mother is told she would hate them if she saw them. The verse quoted as proof speaks only of believers' children, and its own ending cuts against the ruling. Q52:21 promises that believers' children who 'followed them in faith' will be joined with them, and ends, 'Every person, for what he earned, is retained.' Elsewhere the Qur'an says 'no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another' and 'never would We punish until We sent a messenger' (Q17:15). Children who died before any prophet came to Mecca had earned nothing and had been sent no one.

The rule is not confined to this weak report. In Abu Dawud 4712, graded sound in chain, Aisha asks about the offspring of polytheists and is told they are 'from their fathers'. When she asks, 'without having done anything?', the answer is, 'Allah knows best what they would have done.' The canonical text leaves the same door open that Ahmad's addition walks through.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this report is weak and munkar, as al-Dhahabi said, and that Ibn al-Jawzi, quoted in the same note, held that no hadith about punishing children is sound. Many later scholars hold that children who die young are in Paradise or will be tested on the Day of Judgement, and the Prophet's rebuke of a mother's grief is not something a sound report attributes to him.

Why it fails

On this report's chain the response is right, and the entry claims no more than that. But the tradition's verdict is divided. Abdullah b. Ahmad placed the report in the Musnad, and Ibn Abi Asim carried it in his creed manual al-Sunna (no. 213). The canonical Abu Dawud 4712 still says polytheists' children are 'from their fathers' and that Allah knows what they would have done.

Scholars have to reconcile reports that point both ways, which is why 'in Paradise' and 'tested' are only some of the positions held. The weak report states openly what the sound one leaves unresolved: a child's eternal fate can follow its parents' religion.

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Hell's snakes like camels' necks, scorpions like pack-mules: one sting felt for forty years Hell Basic Musnad Ahmad 17712
"In the Fire are snakes like the necks of Bactrian camels; one of them stings once and [the victim] feels its burning for forty autumns. And in the Fire are scorpions like pack-saddled mules; one of them stings once and [the victim] feels its burning for forty years."

What the hadith says

The Companion Abdullah b. al-Harith b. Jaz' al-Zubaydi reports the Prophet's description of the snakes and scorpions of Hell, each sting felt for forty years. The chain runs through Ibn Lahi'a and Darraj. Al-Arna'ut et al. grade it isnaduhu da'if (weak chain): several imams weakened Darraj b. Sam'an, Ahmad called his hadith munkar (objectionable), and al-Daraqutni called him weak and in another place matruk (abandoned). The editors add that they had earlier graded this same hadith hasan (good) in their edition of Ibn Hibban, 'so let that be corrected from here.' Al-Haythami says that it contains a group of narrators who have been declared reliable. Ibn Hibban, al-Hakim and al-Bayhaqi also record it through Darraj.

Why this is a problem

The text measures torture: snakes as thick as camels' necks, scorpions the size of mules, and pain from a single sting lasting forty years. It was not left in an obscure corner. It sits in the Musnad and, for the snakes half, in Ibn Hibban's collection, which its author called Sahih; al-Hakim and al-Bayhaqi recorded it too.

It also shows how unstable grading can be. The same editorial team that now calls the chain weak had called it good in another book, and al-Haythami's note can be read as an endorsement. Ordinary believers who meet the hadith have no way to know which verdict is current.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is weak, as al-Arna'ut says, so no belief rests on it. The Qur'an already describes the Fire in severe terms, and these details add nothing that is required belief.

Why it fails

That is largely right, and this entry is rated Basic accordingly. Its value is as a record of what the tradition preserved and spread: a weak report, carried in a work called Sahih, and graded good by the same modern editors before they reversed themselves. The hadith matters less than what it shows about how such texts were judged.

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Prophethood, caliphate, 'biting kingship', 'tyrannical kingship', then caliphate again Governance Eschatology Basic Musnad Ahmad 18406
"Prophethood will be among you for as long as Allah wills ... then there will be a caliphate on the method of prophethood ... then there will be biting kingship ... then there will be tyrannical kingship ... then there will be a caliphate on the method of prophethood. Then he fell silent."

What the hadith says

Al-Nu'man b. Bashir says that Abu Tha'laba al-Khushani asked his father Bashir b. Sa'd whether he remembered the Prophet's saying about rulers, and Hudhayfa b. al-Yaman said, 'I remember his sermon.' Each stage lasts as long as Allah wills, and then Allah lifts it: prophethood, a caliphate 'on the method of prophethood', 'biting kingship' (mulk 'add), 'tyrannical kingship' (mulk jabriyya), and finally a caliphate on the method of prophethood once more. The narrator Habib b. Salim adds that when Umar b. Abd al-Aziz became caliph, he wrote this hadith to Yazid b. al-Nu'man b. Bashir, who was in Umar's company, saying, 'I hope the Commander of the Faithful, meaning Umar, comes after the biting and the tyrannical kingship,' and when the letter was taken in to Umar he was 'pleased with it and liked it'. Al-Arna'ut et al. and al-Albani both grade the chain hasan (good). It is also in the Musnad of al-Tayalisi.

Why this is a problem

The canonical version is plainer. In Abu Dawud 4646, 'the caliphate of prophecy will last thirty years', and then Allah gives kingship to whom He wills, and it says nothing of a return. The Musnad version adds a cycle that ends in a restored caliphate, and its first known use was political. Within a century of the Prophet a narrator sent it into the court of a reigning Umayyad caliph, suggesting that he was the promised restoration, and the caliph was pleased.

Umar b. Abd al-Aziz died in AD 720 and dynastic rule went on, so the final stage had to be moved forward again. A prophecy with no names or dates can be fitted to whatever ruler a narrator hopes to please, and to every later movement that claims to restore the caliphate.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Habib's application was only his hope, not part of the Prophet's words, and the text names no one. The stages fit history well: the rightly guided caliphs, the dynasties after them, and later oppressive rule. Many hold that the last stage is still to come.

Why it fails

The response is fair about the text, which is why this entry is rated Basic. But the vagueness is the problem. 'Biting' and 'tyrannical' kingship describe almost every pre-modern monarchy, so the sequence cannot be checked against history. The only time a narrator named the fulfilment, the guess was wrong: Umar's rule did not restore a lasting caliphate. A report graded good (hasan) that has already been misapplied once keeps its final stage open for anyone who wants to claim it.

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'Hold to jihad, for it is the monasticism of Islam' Warfare & Jihad Moderate Musnad Ahmad 11774
"I counsel you to fear Allah, for it is the head of everything. Hold to jihad, for it is the monasticism of Islam. And hold to the remembrance of Allah and the recitation of the Qur'an, for it is your ease in heaven and a mention of you on earth."

What the hadith says

A man asks Abu Sa'id al-Khudri for advice. Abu Sa'id says he is asking what he himself once asked the Prophet, and passes on the answer: fear of Allah, 'the head of everything'; jihad, 'the monasticism (rahbaniyya) of Islam'; and remembrance of Allah and recitation of the Qur'an. Al-Arna'ut et al. grade it isnaduhu da'if (weak chain): Aqil b. Mudrik never met Abu Sa'id, and al-Hajjaj b. Marwan is not known. They list Ibn al-Mubarak's al-Zuhd (840) with the same break, and a second route through Layth b. Abi Sulaym, which is also weak. They also note that al-Haythami said of Ahmad's version, 'its men are trustworthy', and they add an exclamation mark.

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an calls monasticism something Christians 'innovated' and that God 'did not prescribe for them' (Q57:27). This report gives Islam its own monasticism and identifies it as jihad. The complete devotion that Christian ascetics expressed by leaving the world is to be expressed in Islam by going out on campaign.

The idea is not limited to this weak report. In Abu Dawud 2486, graded hasan (good), a man asks permission to become a wandering ascetic (siyaha), and the Prophet answers: 'The wandering of my community is jihad in the path of Allah.' Abu Dawud places it in his Book of Jihad. In both texts the spiritual life of renunciation is redirected into warfare.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is weak, as al-Arna'ut shows. They add that jihad has a wide meaning, including striving against one's own ego, and that the point of the comparison is total dedication: Islam rejected withdrawal from the world and gave believers an active form of devotion instead.

Why it fails

The chain is weak, but the substance survives in a good-graded canonical report, Abu Dawud 2486, which says the same thing about the wandering ascetic. Nothing in either text points to an inner struggle. The canonical version uses 'jihad in the path of Allah', and Abu Dawud files it among the chapters on military campaigns. 'Striving against the ego' is read into the words, not drawn from them.

The rejoinder that Islam chose active devotion over withdrawal is the critic's point put kindly. Where Christianity's highest renunciation was the monastery, these reports make Islam's the battlefield.

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Umar reads from a scripture-people's book; Muhammad, angry: 'If Moses were alive he would have to follow me' Scripture Integrity Basic Musnad Ahmad 15156
"Are you confounded about it, Ibn al-Khattab? By Him in whose hand is my soul, I have brought it to you white and pure. Do not ask them about anything, lest they tell you something true and you deny it, or something false and you believe it. By Him in whose hand is my soul, if Moses were alive, he would have no choice but to follow me."

What the hadith says

Jabir b. Abdullah says that Umar b. al-Khattab brought the Prophet a writing he had obtained from one of the People of the Book and read it to him. The Prophet became angry and said the words above. Al-Arna'ut et al. grade it isnaduhu da'if (weak chain) because Mujalid b. Sa'id is weak. They report that Ibn Hajar quotes al-Bukhari as saying of this report, 'it is not sound', a remark they could not find in the printed text of al-Bukhari's al-Tarikh al-Kabir. Al-Haythami notes that Ahmad and Yahya b. Sa'id weakened Mujalid. The editors list related versions: a mursal (with a missing link) from al-Hasan al-Basri with trustworthy narrators, and others with weak chains.

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an tells Muhammad, 'if you are in doubt about what We have revealed to you, then ask those who have been reading the Scripture before you' (Q10:94), and calls the Torah 'guidance and light' (Q5:44). This report forbids Muslims to ask the People of the Book anything at all, and the reason it gives is telling: they might tell you the truth, and you would deny it. A religion that claims to confirm earlier scripture closes off the one source that could check that claim.

It then ranks Moses below Muhammad in plain terms: the prophet of the Torah, if alive, would have no option but to follow him. Umar is rebuked simply for reading out a Jewish or Christian text.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is weak. Beyond that, the earlier scriptures were altered, so guidance is not to be sought from them. The Qur'an is the final revelation and supersedes them, so a living Moses would of course follow the last prophet.

Why it fails

The weak grading is fair, and the entry is rated Basic. But the response confirms the attitude the report expresses. If the earlier scriptures are corrupt, Q10:94 sends Muhammad to people reading corrupt texts. If they hold truth, this report forbids hearing it. Several weak routes and al-Hasan's mursal show how widely this saying circulated.

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'The imams are from Quraysh', and any of them who rules unjustly bears the curse of Allah Governance Moderate Musnad Ahmad 19777
"The imams are from Quraysh. When they are asked for mercy they show mercy, when they make a covenant they keep it, and when they judge they judge justly. Whoever of them does not do that, upon him is the curse of Allah, the angels and all the people."

What the hadith says

Sayyar b. Salama heard the Companion Abu Barza al-Aslami trace this saying back to the Prophet. Al-Arna'ut et al. grade it sahih li-ghayrihi (sound because of supporting reports) and call this chain qawi (strong). Al-Khattabi called a version from Anas thabit (firmly established). The editors note that al-Tayalisi has a shorter form, 'the imams are from Quraysh as long as they act on three things'. Al-Bukhari has it in his al-Tarikh al-Kabir as 'the amirs are from Quraysh', and remarks that Awf and others narrated it from Sayyar without attributing it to the Prophet.

Why this is a problem

Eligibility for supreme rule is fixed by birth into one Arab tribe. The canonical texts already say so (Bukhari 7139: 'this matter will remain with Quraysh ... as long as they uphold the religion'). This report states it as a bare rule, 'the imams are from Quraysh', and sets it beside the Qur'an's own principle that 'the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you' (Q49:13). A just and pious Muslim from any other people is excluded by lineage.

The conditions do not touch the rule. A Qurayshi ruler who is merciless, breaks his word and judges unjustly is cursed, but the text does not say he loses office or that anyone may replace him with a non-Qurayshi. The only sanction it gives is a curse.

The Muslim response

Muslims stress that the text itself makes Qurayshi leadership conditional on mercy, keeping covenants and justice, and Bukhari 7139 adds 'as long as they uphold the religion'. On this reading leadership was a trust given to the tribe the Arabs of the time would accept, and the curse shows that rulers were held to account, not excused.

Why it fails

The conditions bind how a Qurayshi rules, not who may rule. Failing them earns a curse, not removal, and meeting them does not make a non-Qurayshi eligible. The 'tribe the Arabs would accept' explanation turns a timeless rule ('the imams are from Quraysh') into a historical convenience. The text gives no sign of that, and the report is graded sound.

Al-Bukhari's remark that some narrators did not trace it to the Prophet is worth noting, but the editors still grade it sound through its supporting reports, and the canonical Bukhari 7139 keeps the tribal rule in any case.

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'They envy us nothing as they envy us Friday, the qibla and amin': the curse 'has clung to them until the Day of Resurrection' Antisemitism Basic Musnad Ahmad 25029
"Hush. Allah does not love obscenity or crude speech. They said something and we returned it to them; nothing harmed us, and it has clung to them until the Day of Resurrection. They do not envy us for anything as they envy us for the Friday to which Allah guided us and from which they strayed, for the qibla to which Allah guided us and from which they strayed, and for our saying 'Amin' behind the imam."

What the hadith says

Aisha says that a Jewish man came in and greeted the Prophet with al-sam 'alayka ('death be upon you'). The Prophet answered only 'And upon you'. The man did the same a second and a third time. Then Aisha burst out: 'Rather death be upon you and the wrath of Allah, brothers of apes and pigs! Do you greet the Messenger of Allah with what Allah did not greet him with?' The insult 'brothers of apes and pigs' is Aisha's, and the Prophet rebuked her for it: 'Hush. Allah does not love obscenity or crude speech.' The words in the quote above are the Prophet's own reply. Al-Arna'ut et al. grade it hadith sahih (sound): the narrator Ali b. Asim is weak but others confirm the report. Ahmad Shakir calls the chain sound. The editors' note adds that Ibn Khuzayma has the story without the Friday and qibla part, while al-Bayhaqi has the envy over the qibla, Friday and amin.

Why this is a problem

The rebuke of Aisha is real, and it is to the Prophet's credit. His own words go further than one rude visitor, however. The returned curse 'has clung to them until the Day of Resurrection', and 'they', the Jews as a group, are said to envy Muslims above all for Friday, the direction of prayer and the 'Amin'. One man's insult becomes a permanent condition of a whole people, and the Jews as a people are characterised by their envy of Muslims.

The canonical collections keep a milder form: 'The Jews do not envy you for anything as they envy you for the greeting and the Amin' (Ibn Majah 856). The Friday and qibla envy and the curse lasting until the Resurrection are found here.

The Muslim response

Muslims point out that the Prophet answered the insult only with 'and upon you', and corrected his own wife for harsh language, just as in Bukhari 6030: 'Be gentle, Aisha, and beware of harshness and obscenity.' Envy over religious gifts is a human failing the Qur'an also mentions, and the report speaks of people who mocked him to his face, not of every Jew.

Why it fails

The rebuke was about manners, not substance. 'Allah does not love obscenity' objects to how Aisha spoke. The Prophet did not dispute the idea behind her words, and her phrase was not her own invention: it echoes the Qur'an's 'those whom Allah cursed ... and made of them apes and pigs' (Q5:60). His own reply then makes the curse permanent and collective, with 'them' and 'they' standing for the Jews in general, since the envy is over Friday, the qibla and the Amin, things only a whole community has.

The report is graded sound. The gentler reading of 'only the mockers' is not in the text.

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'My Lord ordered me to obliterate the flutes, lutes and instruments, and the idols' Moral Problems Disbelievers Basic Musnad Ahmad 22218
"Allah sent me as a mercy and guidance to the worlds, and ordered me to obliterate the flutes and the kinarat (meaning lutes and musical instruments) and the idols that were worshipped in the Jahiliyya."

What the hadith says

Abu Umama al-Bahili reports the Prophet saying that Allah sent him as a mercy and ordered him to wipe out (amhaqa) flutes, kinarat and instruments, along with the idols of the Jahiliyya. Allah swears that no servant drinks a gulp of wine without being made to drink its like from the boiling water of Hell, 'whether punished or forgiven', and the same applies to anyone who gives wine to a small child. The report ends that selling, buying, teaching or trading in singing-girls is not lawful and the price paid for them is unlawful. The narrator Yazid glosses kinarat as lutes (barabit). Al-Arna'ut et al. grade it isnaduhu da'if jiddan (very weak chain): Faraj b. Fadala is weak and Ali b. Yazid al-Alhani is 'utterly weak'. Al-Albani grades the chain weak. The editors' note lists it also in al-Tayalisi (1134) and al-Tabarani (7803).

Why this is a problem

Music is put on the same footing as idolatry: flutes and lutes stand beside the idols as things the Prophet was sent to destroy, and this is presented as part of being 'a mercy to the worlds'. The singing-girls clause shows the setting. The ban is limited to singing-girls (al-mughanniyat): the text forbids trading in them and raises no objection to buying and selling people as such.

The wine clause goes further: the drinker is made to drink Hell's boiling water 'whether punished or forgiven', so even forgiveness does not spare him this.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the chain is very weak, as al-Arna'ut and al-Albani say, so no ruling on music or anything else rests on it. Scholars who discuss music rely on other reports.

Why it fails

That is correct, and this entry is rated Basic. What remains is a record of what the tradition circulated: Ahmad, al-Tayalisi and al-Tabarani all transmitted a report that ranks instruments with idols and calls their destruction part of the prophetic mission. The canonical reports on instruments, already covered on this site's Abu Dawud, Ibn Majah and Tirmidhi pages, show that the hostility to music it expresses is not confined to this weak chain.

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