Other collections

Reports from other major works outside the six books: the Sahihs of Ibn Hibban (d. AD 965) and Ibn Khuzayma, the Sunans of al-Darimi, al-Daraqutni and Sa'id b. Mansur, Malik's Muwatta, al-Bukhari's al-Adab al-Mufrad, the Musnad of Abu Ya'la, Abu Nu'aym's Hilyat al-Awliya and the books of Ibn Abi al-Dunya. 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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Sex in Paradise “thrust upon thrust”; the woman becomes a virgin again Paradise Sexual Issues Women Slavery & Captives Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 7402
"Yes, by Him in whose hand is my soul: thrust upon thrust. And when he gets up from her, she goes back to being purified and a virgin."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports that the Prophet was asked, “Will we have intercourse in Paradise?” He swore that they would, dahman dahman, and added that when the man gets up from the woman she returns “purified and a virgin.” It is Sahih Ibn Hibban 7402 (with a second chain at 7403), outside the six canonical books. Both of the leading modern editors grade it hasan, not sahih: al-Arna’ut because one narrator, Darraj ibn Sam’an, is “truthful” (saduq) rather than fully reliable, and al-Albani in al-Ta’liqat al-Hisan 7359. Ibn Hibban placed it under the heading: “that when a man of Paradise has intercourse with his slave-girl there, she returns a virgin as she was.”

Why this is a problem

Dahm is not a vague word. The classical lexicographer Ibn al-Athir, quoted in al-Arna’ut’s footnote, defines it as intercourse and penetration “with pushing and jolting,” and explains the repetition as emphasis: thrust after thrust. The Prophet answers a question about the afterlife with an oath and an image of forceful sex, and then specifies what matters about the woman afterwards: her virginity is restored, so the next encounter is again with a virgin. The woman’s experience is not mentioned; she is reset for the man.

Ibn Hibban, a major hadith master, read the hadith as being about a man’s slave-girl in Paradise. That heading is his own inference, not the Prophet’s wording, but it shows that a leading scholar assumed ownership of women would continue in the afterlife and found this text the natural place to say so. Sex in Paradise as such is canonical (Tirmidhi 2536, the strength of a hundred men); the restored virginity and the dahm are what this report adds.

The Muslim response

The usual Muslim answer does not dispute the hadith. HadithAnswers accepts it as authentic on Ibn Hibban’s grading and renders dahman dahman “with vigour.” The usual explanation is that the pleasures of Paradise are real but pure: the word mutahhara (“purified”) shows that nothing degrading is meant, and the renewal of virginity is a gift that makes every encounter new.

Why it fails

“With vigour” is a softening of a word that the classical lexicon defines physically, and the softer translation is needed only because the plain sense is uncomfortable. “Purified” does not answer the objection either: whatever the purity means, the text pairs it with restored virginity, so the one thing it says about the woman afterwards is that her body is renewed for the man’s next encounter.

Since the defence accepts the report as authentic, the issue is not the chain but the picture. Paradise is promised as the reward of the righteous, and the only detail this hadith gives about the woman is her renewable virginity. It is the man who is rewarded, and the woman who is described, by a hadith master, as his slave-girl.

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Apostate women: “otherwise she is killed”; “she is to be slaughtered” Apostasy & Blasphemy Women Hudud Moderate Sunan al-Daraqutni 2823, Sunan al-Daraqutni 2824
"Concerning a woman who apostatises from Islam: that she be slaughtered."

What the hadith says

Jabir ibn Abdullah reports that a woman called Umm Marwan left Islam, and the Prophet ordered that Islam be offered to her again: “if she came back [she would be spared], otherwise she would be killed” (al-Daraqutni 2823). A second report, also from Jabir, attributes a general ruling to the Prophet: “concerning a woman who apostatises from Islam, that she be slaughtered (tudhbah)” (al-Daraqutni 2824). Both are weak, and the Muslim critics say so of the Umm Marwan report: al-Bayhaqi calls the chains weak with unknown narrators, al-‘Uqayli faults Ma’mar ibn Bakkar, Ibn Hajar calls both chains weak, and al-Albani grades the report da’if (Irwa’ al-Ghalil 2472). Al-Daraqutni’s same chapter also has the opposite saying, “a woman is not killed if she apostatises” (2819), which he himself calls a forgery.

Why this is a problem

These reports matter because of what they were used for. The general command in Bukhari 6922, “whoever changes his religion, kill him,” does not say whether it covers women. The Umm Marwan report fills that gap with a named woman, a chance to recant and a death sentence, and the second report uses the word for slaughtering an animal. Al-Daraqutni put them in his chapter on legal penalties, and he rejected the contrary report as forged, leaving the killing reports as the ones on the page.

The majority of jurists reached the same result without needing these chains. Al-Mawardi, a leading Shafi’i judge, states in al-Hawi al-Kabir that “free and slave, man and woman, are equal in being killed for apostasy.” A woman’s change of belief is a capital crime in three of the four Sunni schools.

The Muslim response

As the alukah article on the apostate sets out, the Jabir report about an apostate woman is weak (it quotes Ibn Hajar: isnaduhu da'if), so it cannot bind anyone. The Hanafi school does not execute apostate women at all: as Ibn al-Humam explains in Fath al-Qadir, she is imprisoned rather than killed, because the Prophet forbade the killing of women. The question is a matter of legitimate disagreement among the schools.

Why it fails

On the chains the response is correct, and this entry does not claim the Prophet said these words. But the weakness changes little in practice. The majority schools (Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali) kill the apostate woman anyway, on the strength of the general hadith in Bukhari and, as alukah notes, Abu Bakr’s execution of a woman apostate. The weak reports were not the basis of the rule; they were supporting evidence for a rule already held.

The Hanafi exception is real, but it replaces execution with imprisonment for the same act, leaving her a prisoner for her beliefs. The choice offered to a woman who leaves Islam is between death and imprisonment, depending on which school’s court she stands in.

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Ibn Hibban: every report of the Prophet tying a stone to his belly is a falsehood Contradictions Prophetic Character Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 3579
"This report is proof that the reports which mention the Prophet placing a stone on his belly are all falsehoods. Their meaning is only hujaz [the edge of the waist-wrapper], not hajar [stone]. For God used to feed the Messenger of God and give him drink when he fasted continuously, so how would He leave him hungry when he was not fasting continuously, so that he needed to tie a stone on his belly? And what use is a stone against hunger?"

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik reports that the Prophet said, 'Do not fast continuously.' They said, 'But you fast continuously.' He said, 'I am not like any of you: I am fed and given drink.' The hadith itself is ordinary: it is also Bukhari 1961, and al-Arna'ut grades Ibn Hibban's chain sahih on al-Bukhari's condition. What follows it is not a hadith but Ibn Hibban's own comment, introduced with 'Abu Hatim said' (Abu Hatim is Ibn Hibban's own kunya). He concludes that every report of the Prophet tying a stone to his belly is false, and that the word in them must be read hujaz (the edge of the waist-wrapper) instead of hajar (stone) (Sahih Ibn Hibban 3579). The editor, Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut, answers in his second footnote: 'many scholars have refuted the author on this claim.' Quoting Ibn Hajar, he says the strongest refutation is in Ibn Hibban's own Sahih: Ibn Abbas's report in which the Prophet meets Abu Bakr and Umar at midday and says, 'By Him in whose hand is my soul, nothing brought me out but hunger.'

Why this is a problem

The stone reports are not marginal. In Bukhari 4101 Jabir says that at the digging of the Trench 'a stone was tied to his belly', because they had eaten nothing for three days. In Tirmidhi 2371 the Companions show the Prophet a stone each on their bellies and he shows two (a weaker report: Tirmidhi calls it gharib, and sunnah.com marks it da'if). Ibn Hibban, a hadith master who titled his book 'the Sahih', calls all such reports 'falsehoods'. He does not fault a single narrator. His reason is theological: a prophet whom God feeds during a continuous fast cannot have gone hungry at other times. Then he rescues the wording by changing one word, hajar to hujaz.

That is the method critics of the hadith literature describe: a text is judged by whether its content suits a doctrine about the Prophet, and an unwelcome word can be re-read until it fits. Here a leading compiler applies it to a report in Bukhari, while his own book carries the 'only hunger brought me out' report that contradicts him. The same scene is canonical in Muslim 2038a.

The Muslim response

Many Muslim scholars have refuted Ibn Hibban here, as his own editor notes. Al-Arna'ut, following Ibn Hajar, holds that the Prophet really did feel hunger and defends the stone against Ibn Hibban's objection. 'I am fed and given drink' applies only to his continuous fasts, and the majority read it figuratively: God gives him the strength of someone who has eaten. As for 'what use is a stone against hunger', the footnote answers that it props up the back: a man with an empty belly may be too weak to stand upright, and a stone tied on firmly lets him stand. One scholar's mistaken comment is not part of the religion.

Why it fails

On the substance the response is right, and the entry does not claim that Muslims follow Ibn Hibban here. The point is what his comment shows about how hadith were judged. One of the masters whose collection is still called Sahih declared reports found in Bukhari to be falsehoods because they did not fit his picture of the Prophet, and proposed changing a word to make the problem disappear. If a compiler of his rank could reject sound reports on doctrinal grounds, the claim that the hadith corpus was sifted only by neutral chain-criticism does not hold.

The majority's answer also has a cost. To keep the stone reports, it has to read 'I am fed and given drink' as a figure of speech, so the supposed miracle of the continuous fast becomes a matter of being given strength.

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'Written as the Seal of the Prophets while Adam lay in his clay', and his mother's light lit up the palaces of Syria Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Basic Sahih Ibn Hibban 6404
"I am written with God as the Seal of the Prophets while Adam was still lying cast down in his clay. And I will tell you the first of that: the prayer of my father Abraham, the good news of Jesus, and the vision my mother saw when she gave birth to me: that a light came out of her, by which the palaces of Syria were lit up for her."

What the hadith says

Al-'Irbad b. Sariya says he heard the Prophet say that he was written down with God as the Seal of the Prophets while Adam still lay 'cast down in his clay', and that the first signs of him were Abraham's prayer, Jesus's good news, and his mother's vision at his birth: a light came out of her and lit up the palaces of Syria. Ibn Hibban heads it 'God's writing Muhammad, with Him, as the Seal of the Prophets' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6404). Al-Arna'ut grades it hadith sahih li-ghayrihi: sound only through supporting routes, not on its own chain. Two of its narrators, Sa'id b. Suwayd and Abd al-A'la b. Hilal, are vouched for by Ibn Hibban in his book of trustworthy narrators; al-Bukhari lists both, and Ibn Abi Hatim lists Sa'id, without praise or blame, and al-Bazzar says of Sa'id 'there is no harm in him'. The dorar.net cards show the same verdict for this number, but the verdicts elsewhere are mixed: in his notes to Sharh al-Sunna (3626) al-Arna'ut says no one but Ibn Hibban declared Sa'id b. Suwayd reliable and that al-Bukhari said his hadith is not sound, and al-Albani grades a version weak in Da'if al-Jami' (2091) though sound in Hidayat al-Ruwat (5691).

Why this is a problem

The nearest canonical saying is far plainer. In Tirmidhi 3609 the Prophet is asked when prophethood was due to him and answers only: 'while Adam was between spirit and body.' Ibn Hibban's report adds that he was already recorded as the Seal of the Prophets, the title the Qur'an gives him (Q 33:40), and it adds a birth miracle: his mother sees a light leave her body that illuminates the palaces of Syria.

These are the features of a growing legend: the finality of his prophethood written back to before the first man, and his birth marked by a light reaching the lands his followers would later rule. None of it is in Bukhari or Muslim, and the version that has it is sound only by being propped up with other reports.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that 'written' means recorded in God's decree and foreknowledge, not that Muhammad existed as a person before Adam. The light is explicitly his mother's vision (ru'ya), not a public event that others saw, and it is read as a sign that his message would reach Syria. A grading of sahih li-ghayrihi is still an acceptance: supporting routes make up for the weak points in one chain.

Why it fails

The response is fair on the meaning, and this entry claims neither that the text teaches Muhammad's physical pre-existence nor that anyone saw the light. It is rated Basic for that reason. What remains is the pattern. The plain canonical saying about Adam 'between spirit and body' becomes, in Ibn Hibban's Sahih, a record of Muhammad as the final prophet written before Adam was alive, followed by a light-vision at his birth. The grading rests on narrators whom Ibn Hibban himself listed as trustworthy (one also has al-Bazzar's mild 'no harm in him'), with support from other routes. A detail like this can be accepted by the hadith system without being shown to come from the Prophet.

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120,000 prophets, 313 messengers and 104 books: the count in Ibn Hibban's Sahih comes through a narrator called a liar Scripture Integrity Strange / Obscure Pre-Islamic Borrowings Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 361
"I said: Messenger of God, how many were the prophets? He said: A hundred and twenty thousand. I said: Messenger of God, how many of them were messengers? He said: Three hundred and thirteen, a great crowd. ... I said: Messenger of God, how many books did God send down? He said: A hundred and four books."

What the hadith says

In a long dialogue Abu Dharr finds the Prophet alone in the mosque and questions him. The prophets numbered 'a hundred and twenty thousand', of whom 313 were messengers. The first was Adam, whom God created with His hand and spoke to face to face. Four were Syriac: Adam, Seth, Enoch, 'who is Idris and the first to write with the pen', and Noah. Four were Arabs: Hud, Shu'ayb, Salih and Muhammad. God sent down 104 books: fifty sheets to Seth, thirty to Enoch, ten to Abraham, ten to Moses before the Torah, then the Torah, Gospel, Psalms and Qur'an. The seven heavens beside the Footstool are 'like a ring thrown down in a desert' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 361). The page says 120,000, not the 124,000 often quoted. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu da'if jiddan (very weak chain): Ibrahim b. Hisham al-Ghassani was called a liar by Abu Hatim and by Abu Zur'a and 'abandoned' (matruk) by al-Dhahabi. The same footnote quotes al-Haythami: 'Ibn Hibban declared him trustworthy; Abu Hatim and Abu Zur'a declared him weak.'

Why this is a problem

The Qur'an gives no number of prophets, of messengers or of revealed books. A believer who wants these numbers has to get them from reports like this one, and this one reaches the Prophet only through a man two of the leading early critics called a liar. Ibn Hibban vouched for the man and placed the report in a collection he titled Sahih, under a heading about having 'a share of every good'.

The content shows its nature. It counts the heavenly sheets given to Seth and Enoch, names Enoch as the inventor of writing, sorts the early prophets into Syriac and Arab groups, and turns Abraham's and Moses's lost scriptures into exact numbers. None of these figures can be found in the Qur'an.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars do not rest the belief on this report. Ibn 'Uthaymin, in his commentary on Surat Ghafir, notes that 'some scholars said this hadith is not sound, even though Ibn Hibban authenticated it'. The binding text is the Qur'an: 'Among them are those We have related to you, and among them are those We have not related to you' (Q 40:78). The exact number of prophets is not an article of faith.

Why it fails

On the chain the response is correct, and the entry is rated no higher than Moderate for that reason. The problem is the label on the book. Ibn Hibban did not include the report by oversight: on al-Haythami's account he considered its key narrator trustworthy where Abu Hatim and Abu Zur'a called him a liar. A collection presented as 'sound' contains, on its own editor's verdict, a very weak report through such a man, and its numbers are repeated without that warning.

The weakness also leaves the question it tried to answer open. If the 120,000 is not established, Muslims have no sound figure for the number of prophets or books, only a verse saying that most of them were never named.

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Ninety-nine tinnin in the unbeliever's grave, each one seventy seven-headed snakes Hell Disbelievers Strange / Obscure Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 3122
"The punishment of the unbeliever in his grave. By Him in whose hand is my soul, ninety-nine tinnin are set upon him. Do you know what the tinnin is? Seventy snakes, each snake with seven heads. They sting him and scratch him until the Day of Resurrection."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports the Prophet saying that the believer lies in his grave in a green garden, the grave widened for him seventy cubits and lit like the full moon. He then asks what the 'life of hardship' in Q 20:124 means, and answers: the unbeliever's punishment in the grave. Ninety-nine tinnin are set on him, and the Prophet defines the word himself: each tinnin is seventy snakes, and each snake has seven heads. They sting and scratch him until the Resurrection (Sahih Ibn Hibban 3122). Tinnin is usually translated 'dragon' or 'great serpent'. Ibn Hibban heads it 'the description of the tinnin set upon the unbeliever in his grave'. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu hasan (good chain): its narrator Darraj is reliable except from Abu al-Haytham, and here he narrates from Ibn Hujayra. Al-Albani also grades it hasan (Sahih al-Mawarid 651, Sahih al-Targhib 3552). Ibn Kathir dissents: 'raising it to the Prophet is very objectionable' (raf'uhu munkar jiddan).

Why this is a problem

The canonical version is already severe. In Tirmidhi 2460 (which al-Tirmidhi calls gharib) God assigns the wicked man or the unbeliever seventy tinnin, any one of which would leave the earth barren if it breathed on it, and they bite and scratch him until the reckoning. Ibn Hibban's version raises the number to ninety-nine and multiplies each beast into seventy snakes with seven heads. By our arithmetic that is 6,930 snakes and 48,510 heads attacking one buried body for centuries, before the Day of Judgement has even begun.

This punishment falls on 'the unbeliever' as such: the hadith gives no crime but unbelief. Two of the most influential modern graders accept the report as hasan, so it is offered to Muslims as the Prophet's own explanation of a Qur'anic verse.

The Muslim response

Muslims hold that the punishment of the grave belongs to the unseen (ghayb), whose nature cannot be measured by worldly sense, and they accept such details only when the chain is sound. Here the experts disagree. Ibn Kathir judged that the report should not be attributed to the Prophet, so it may be a Companion's words or a narrator's elaboration. The milder canonical version is itself weak.

Why it fails

Ibn Kathir's objection is real, but it is one verdict against two. Al-Arna'ut and al-Albani both looked at the chain and graded it hasan, and a Muslim who follows them has accepted the seven-headed snakes as the Prophet's words. Calling the scene 'unseen' does not soften what is described; it only puts it beyond checking.

Even on Ibn Kathir's view, the report circulated under the Prophet's name in a collection called Sahih. The number of beasts and their heads differs from one version to the next (seventy in Tirmidhi, ninety-nine here, each one seventy seven-headed snakes), which in our view is how such descriptions develop when they are retold to frighten listeners.

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'How will it be for one of you when the dogs of al-Haw'ab bark at her?': Aisha hears them and goes on Women Governance Prophetic Character Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 6732
"She said: I can only think that I must turn back. I heard the Messenger of God say: 'How will it be for one of you when the dogs of al-Haw'ab bark at her?'"

What the hadith says

The Successor Qays b. Abi Hazim reports that when Aisha was on her way, she reached one of the waters of the Banu Amir at night and heard dogs barking. She asked what water it was and was told: al-Haw'ab. She said she must turn back. Her companions answered, 'Wait, God have mercy on you: you will go forward, the Muslims will see you, and God will set things right through you.' She repeated that she must turn back, and quoted the Prophet's words (the 'you' is feminine plural) (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6732). Ibn Hibban heads it 'Report about the going out of Aisha, Mother of the Believers, to Iraq'. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu sahih 'ala shart al-shaykhayn (sound on the condition of al-Bukhari and Muslim). He notes that the man who urged her on was al-Zubayr in some routes, and Talha and al-Zubayr in others, and he grades Ahmad's version (24254) sound as well. Al-Bazzar has a second version from Ibn Abbas (Musnad al-Bazzar 4777): 'Would that I knew which of you is the rider of the hairy-faced camel. She goes out and the dogs of Haw'ab bark at her; many are killed on her right and on her left; then she escapes after she nearly did not.' That is the wording in Kashf al-Astar 3273; the printed Bahr reads 'the dogs of Haw'ab come out'. Al-Haythami and Ibn Hajar call its narrators trustworthy, but the early critics Abu Hatim and Abu Zur'a judged this Ibn Abbas version munkar (objectionable).

Why this is a problem

In the sound Qays report the Prophet does not name Aisha; it is Aisha who applies his words to herself. She recognises the place, understands the warning and says twice that she must go back. She is then talked out of it by her companions, among them al-Zubayr, with the promise that her presence would bring peace. The journey did not end in peace. Al-Haythami files the report in his chapter on the Camel and Siffin, and al-Bazzar's version says that 'many are killed on her right and on her left'.

Either way the outcome is awkward for the tradition. If the Prophet foresaw this, his warning was a vague question that did not stop the Mother of the Believers, and leading Companions advised her to set it aside. If he did not, the story was shaped after the events it predicts. The report sits in Ibn Hibban's Sahih, graded sound on the condition of al-Bukhari and Muslim, with no six-book parallel.

The Muslim response

The standard answer, as given in Ummuna 'A'isha, is that Aisha went out to reconcile the Muslims, not to fight. When she remembered the hadith she meant to return, but al-Zubayr advised her to continue for the sake of making peace, and she weighed that benefit by her own judgement (ijtihad), 'and she is not protected from error in judgement'. The Prophet's words are a question, not a curse, and they do not condemn her.

Why it fails

The response is right that the hadith contains no curse, and this entry makes no such claim. But its own account grants the main point: she heard the warning, took it to be about her, and was persuaded to continue against it. The appeal to ijtihad concedes that a Companion's judgement overrode a prophetic warning on the very road it described.

'Reconciliation' was the stated purpose, as her companions put it, but the al-Bazzar version, whose narrators al-Haythami and Ibn Hajar call trustworthy though Abu Hatim and Abu Zur'a judged it munkar, speaks of many killed around her, and al-Haythami's arrangement places the report with the Camel. The warning did nothing to stop what followed.

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Abraham circumcised himself at 120 and lived 80 more years: Ibn Hibban's version against Bukhari's 80 Contradictions Strange / Obscure Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 6204
"Abraham circumcised himself with the adze when he was a hundred and twenty years old, and he lived eighty years after that."

What the hadith says

Under the heading 'The time at which Abraham, the Friend of the Merciful, circumcised himself', Ibn Hibban records Abu Hurayra quoting the Prophet: Abraham circumcised himself with al-qadum at 120 and lived eighty more years (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6204). The next entry adds Abd al-Razzaq's remark that al-qadum is 'the name of the village' (6205), not the adze. Al-Arna'ut calls it hadith sahih for its chain, but adds that 'there is a problem in its text'. He quotes Ibn Hajar: 'apparently something has dropped from the text, because this amount [120 years] is the length of his life.' The eighty-year wording, he says, has a chain 'of the utmost soundness' and is stronger, and he quotes al-Nawawi that eighty is correct and that the Muwatta's 120, as Abu Hurayra's own words, 'is interpreted or rejected'. Al-Albani grades this wording mawdu' (fabricated) in al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 2112, and Ibn Hajar says (Fath 11/91) that it was narrated both as the Prophet's words and as Abu Hurayra's, with weakness in its chain.

Why this is a problem

The same Companion, Abu Hurayra, is the source of two incompatible figures, both credited to the Prophet. In Bukhari 3356 and Muslim 2370 Abraham circumcises himself at eighty; in Bukhari 6298 'after eighty years'. Ibn Hibban's chain, which al-Arna'ut accepts as sound, gives 120 and then eighty more years, a lifespan of two hundred. Even what al-qadum was is disputed: Bukhari 6298 itself adds a note that, read al-qaddum, it is a place, while the English translation gives 'adze'.

Neither figure matches the earlier scripture the Qur'an claims to confirm. Genesis 17:24 says Abraham was ninety-nine when he was circumcised, and Genesis 25:7 gives his whole life as 175 years.

The Muslim response

Al-Nawawi and al-Arna'ut answer that the eighty-year version is the authentic one, transmitted through a far stronger chain in Bukhari and Muslim. The 120 is a narrator's slip, perhaps from confusing the age at circumcision with Abraham's total lifespan, or a remark of Abu Hurayra's own that should not be attributed to the Prophet. A sound chain does not make every word of a text sound, and the critics flagged this text.

Why it fails

The repair cannot account for the wording. The report does not give 120 as a lifespan; it gives 120 as his age at circumcision and adds 'he lived eighty years after that'. Ibn Hajar's suggestion that 'something dropped' is a guess about a text nobody has.

More important is what the case shows about the grading system. A chain that al-Arna'ut calls sound carries a statement that al-Albani calls fabricated. Ibn Hibban placed it in his Sahih under a heading that treats the date as settled fact. And the version Muslims fall back on, eighty, still contradicts the Torah's ninety-nine. The hadith gives a confident age for an event in Abraham's life, and transmissions graded sound do not agree what the age was.

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Gabriel: whoever hears the Prophet's name without blessing him and enters the Fire, 'may God banish him: say Amin' Prophetic Character Hell Ritual Absurdities Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 907
"Gabriel came to me and said: Whoever reaches the month of Ramadan and is not forgiven, and enters the Fire, may God banish him. Say: Amin. So I said: Amin. ... And whoever you are mentioned before and does not send blessings on you, and dies and enters the Fire, may God banish him. Say: Amin. So I said: Amin."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports that the Prophet climbed the pulpit and said 'Amin, Amin, Amin.' Asked why, he explained that Gabriel had come with three curses, each ending 'may God banish him (fa-ab'adahu Allah): say Amin', and he had answered Amin each time. They fall on whoever reaches Ramadan without being forgiven and enters the Fire; on whoever lives to see his parents, or one of them, without honouring them, then dies and enters the Fire; and on whoever hears the Prophet mentioned without sending blessings on him, then dies and enters the Fire (Sahih Ibn Hibban 907). Ibn Hibban heads it: 'Hope of entering the Gardens for one who blesses the Chosen One when he is mentioned, with fear of entering the Fires for one who passes over him whenever he is mentioned.' Al-Arna'ut grades the chain hasan (good), and al-Albani grades it hasan sahih (Sahih al-Targhib 1679).

Why this is a problem

The canonical sayings are milder. In Tirmidhi 3545 the Prophet says 'may his nose be rubbed in the dust' of the man who does not bless him when he is mentioned, and Muslim 2551a has the same phrase only for the son who does not earn Paradise through his parents. Ibn Hibban's version replaces humiliation with the Fire and banishment from God, brings in Gabriel, and has the Prophet himself seal each curse with 'Amin'.

The third curse concerns the Prophet's own honour. Saying a formula of blessing whenever his name is heard is placed in the same list as honouring one's parents, and the angel of revelation asks Muhammad to say Amin to God's banishing anyone who fails to say it and then dies and enters the Fire. Ibn Hibban, a jurist and hadith master, drew the lesson in his heading: fear of the Fire for whoever omits it.

The Muslim response

Muslims read the hadith as tarhib, a strong warning meant to encourage good deeds, not as a legal ruling. The wording itself is conditional: each curse falls on someone who 'dies and enters the Fire', so the hadith does not say that missing a single blessing sends anyone to Hell. The point is that whoever wastes such easy chances of forgiveness, in Ramadan, with his parents, or by a short prayer for the Prophet, has only himself to blame.

Why it fails

The grammatical point is fair: the curse is on someone who ends in the Fire, and the entry does not claim that one omission damns. But Ibn Hibban did not read it as a mild exhortation. His heading names 'fear of entering the Fires' for whoever passes over the Prophet's name, and he treats the blessing as one of the deeds on which entry to the Fire may depend.

The warning genre does not change what is said. A prophet hears Gabriel ask him to approve, with his own Amin, God's banishment of people who neglect a formula honouring him. Al-Albani grades the report hasan sahih, so for those who follow his gradings it is a saying of the Prophet.

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The Ramadan sermon ('its beginning is mercy, its middle forgiveness, its end release from the Fire'): its own collector headed it 'if the report is sound' Ritual Absurdities Basic Sahih Ibn Khuzayma 1887
"It is a month whose beginning is mercy, whose middle is forgiveness, and whose end is release from the Fire."

What the hadith says

Salman al-Farisi reports a sermon the Prophet gave on the last day of Sha'ban: 'A great month has overshadowed you.' Whoever draws near to God in it with a voluntary good deed is like one who performed an obligatory deed at other times, and an obligatory deed in it equals seventy obligatory deeds at other times. It is 'a month whose beginning is mercy, whose middle is forgiveness and whose end is release from the Fire', and whoever gives a fasting man his fill will be given a drink from the Prophet's Basin after which he will never thirst until he enters Paradise (Sahih Ibn Khuzayma 1887). Ibn Khuzayma placed it under the heading 'Chapter on the virtues of the month of Ramadan, if the report is sound'. His editor al-A'zami notes: isnaduhu da'if (weak chain), because Ali b. Zayd b. Jud'an is weak. Al-Albani calls it munkar (Da'if al-Targhib 589).

Why this is a problem

This is among the best-known Ramadan texts, and its division of the month into thirds of mercy, forgiveness and release from the Fire is widely repeated. It reaches the Prophet only through a weak narrator, and the man who recorded it doubted it in his chapter title. IslamQA explains how the doubt was lost: the word 'if' dropped out of some later citations, such as al-Mundhiri's al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib, so readers thought Ibn Khuzayma had declared it sound.

The content is questioned as well. The same IslamQA answer points out that the chain is also broken, since Sa'id b. al-Musayyib did not hear from Salman, and that Abu Hatim called the hadith munkar. It adds that the three-part division of the month 'has no evidence', that the claim that a voluntary deed counts as an obligatory one 'has no evidence' either, and that the figure of seventy is questionable.

The Muslim response

The IslamQA answer is the Muslim response: the hadith is weak and should not be taught as the Prophet's words. The merit of Ramadan rests on sound reports: the whole month is mercy and forgiveness, God frees people from the Fire every night of it, and fasting has a reward God sets Himself. Ibn Khuzayma himself was careful to say 'if the report is sound', and the scholars have warned against it.

Why it fails

The response is correct, and the entry is rated Basic accordingly. Its interest lies in how the tradition handled the report. A text that its own collector marked as doubtful lost its warning when one word fell out of the citations. A three-part scheme for which, by IslamQA's own account, there is no evidence then spread far enough that a fatwa had to be written to undo it. The weakness of the hadith has not stopped it being repeated.

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Khaybar: the Prophet handed Huyayy's uncle to al-Zubayr, 'who touched him with torment', until the treasure was found Warfare & Jihad Antisemitism Moral Problems Strong Sahih Ibn Hibban 5199
"'What happened to Huyayy's leather bag that he brought from al-Nadir?' He said: 'Expenses and wars used it up.' He said: 'The time is recent and the money was more than that.' So the Messenger of God handed him over to al-Zubayr b. al-Awwam, who touched him with torment."

What the hadith says

Abd Allah b. Umar reports that the Prophet fought the people of Khaybar until he drove them into their fortress, and they made terms: they would leave with what their camels could carry, the gold and silver would go to the Prophet, and they must hide nothing, 'and if they did, there would be no protection and no security for them'. A leather bag of money and jewellery belonging to Huyayy b. Akhtab, brought from the expelled Banu al-Nadir, was hidden. The Prophet asked Huyayy's uncle about it, rejected his answer, and handed him to al-Zubayr, 'who touched him with torment' (fa-massahu bi-'adhab). The man then said he had seen Huyayy going round a ruin nearby; they searched it and found the bag. The Prophet killed the two sons of Abu al-Huqayq, one of them Safiyya's husband, enslaved their women and children and divided their property 'for the breach they had committed' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 5199). Ibn Hibban cites the report for a point about sharecropping. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu sahih, and Ibn al-Qayyim calls it 'this sound sunna'.

Why this is a problem

The canonical version leaves the method out. In Abu Dawud 3006 the uncle, named Sa'ya, says the money was spent, and the next sentence is simply 'then they found the bag'. Ibn Hibban's version supplies the missing step: the prisoner was handed to a Companion to be tormented until he gave up the location. Nothing had been found when the torment began. The only ground was the Prophet's own estimate that the time was short and the money too much to have been spent.

The jurists drew the obvious conclusion. Ibn al-Qayyim cites this report as precedent for 'the punishment of people under suspicion' ('uqubat ahl al-tuham), and goes further. Citing 'some routes of this story' in which Kinana's cousin confessed to the money when the Prophet handed him to al-Zubayr, who tormented him, he says this proves 'the validity of the confession of one under coercion when the property appears with him'. If a suspect is punished until he confesses to a theft and the stolen goods are found, his hand is cut off, 'and this is right beyond doubt'. A report graded sound becomes the legal basis for punishing suspects until they confess.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer, with Ibn al-Qayyim, that the Jews of Khaybar had agreed that concealing anything would cancel their protection, and they broke that condition. The uncle's story was plainly false, as the Prophet recognised from the circumstances, so this was not the punishment of an innocent man but of a party to the breach who was lying. The text does not say what al-Zubayr did, and Ibn al-Qayyim stresses that the hand is cut for the stolen property that is found, not for the forced confession itself.

Why it fails

The text does not specify the torment, and this entry does not add details from other sources. But 'touched him with torment' is torment, applied to a prisoner in order to extract information, on the strength of a suspicion. The treaty made concealment a ground for cancelling protection; it did not make the uncle's body a means of finding the bag.

Ibn al-Qayyim's distinction does not help either. The goods were found only because the man was tormented into revealing them, and the classical jurist who cites this 'sound sunna' approves of exactly that sequence. The same report records Abd Allah b. Rawaha, in his own words, telling the Jews of Khaybar that they are more hateful to him than their number of apes and pigs, and Safiyya saying that the Prophet had killed her husband, her father and her brother.

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The Prophet seeks Abu Bakr's backing against Aisha; Abu Bakr slaps her and strikes her chest Women Moral Problems Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 4185
"The Prophet sought Abu Bakr's backing [ista'dhara] against Aisha, and the Prophet did not think he would treat her as he did. Abu Bakr raised his hand and slapped her, and struck her on the chest. The Prophet was upset by that and said: 'Abu Bakr, I will never seek your backing against her again.'"

What the hadith says

Aisha herself narrates that the Prophet ista'dhara Abu Bakr 'an Aisha: he turned to her father over her. Al-Arna'ut explains the word: 'he asked him to excuse [it] if he disciplined her'. The Prophet did not expect what followed: Abu Bakr raised his hand, slapped her and struck her chest. The Prophet was upset and told Abu Bakr he would never do this again (Sahih Ibn Hibban 4185). Ibn Hibban's heading turns the story into a ruling: 'Permission for a man to seek his father-in-law's backing against his wife when he dislikes some disagreement from her.' The cause of the disagreement is not stated. Al-Arna'ut grades it hadith sahih, and al-Albani grades the chain sahih (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 6/943).

Why this is a problem

The Prophet did not strike Aisha, and he was unhappy with the blow. But he did take a quarrel with his wife to her father, asking his backing for disciplining her, and the father answered with his hand. The only consequence recorded is the Prophet's word to Abu Bakr that he would not seek his backing against her again. The report records no rebuke of the slap itself and nothing said to Aisha.

The pattern is not isolated. In Muslim 1478, when the Prophet's wives press him for maintenance, Umar says he would make the Prophet laugh: he describes slapping his own wife on the neck when she asked him for money, and the Prophet laughs. Then Abu Bakr gets up and strikes Aisha's neck, and Umar strikes Hafsa's. Ibn Hibban, a jurist as well as a hadith master, read Abu Bakr's slap as the occasion for a general permission: a husband may bring his wife's father in against her.

The Muslim response

Muslims point to the Prophet's reaction. He 'was upset by that' and declared he would never seek Abu Bakr's backing again, which shows disapproval of the blow. The Prophet himself never struck a wife. Abu Bakr acted as an angry father on his own initiative, and the hadith records the Prophet distancing himself from it.

Why it fails

The response describes the text correctly, but it shows less than it claims. The Prophet is upset by the blow, but the only words he says concern his own step, involving Abu Bakr; he does not rebuke the violence in words, and he does not apologise to Aisha in the report. Ibn Hibban did not draw from it that striking a wife or daughter is forbidden. He drew a permission for husbands, under a heading that speaks of 'some disagreement' from the wife as sufficient cause.

Taken with Muslim 1478, where the Prophet laughs at Umar's slap and his two closest Companions strike their daughters for asking him for money, the report shows that such blows happened in the Prophet's own household, and that in Muslim 1478 they drew his laughter rather than his censure.

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'As if I see Moses stoning the jamra on a red she-camel': in Muslim the camel and the cloak belong to Jonah Pre-Islamic Borrowings Ritual Absurdities Contradictions Basic Sahih Ibn Hibban 6219
"It is as if I am looking at Moses stoning the jamra on a red she-camel, its halter of palm fibre, and on him a cloak of wool."

What the hadith says

Ibn Abbas reports that the Prophet came to the valley of al-Azraq and said, 'It is as if I am looking at Moses coming down, calling out the talbiya to his Lord.' Passing a mountain pass, he asked its name and said: 'It is as if I am looking at Moses stoning the jamra on a red she-camel, its halter of palm fibre, and on him a cloak of wool' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6219). Ibn Hibban heads it: 'The Chosen One's description of the talbiya of Moses, the one to whom God spoke, and his stoning of the jamras in his pilgrimage.' Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu sahih 'ala shart Muslim (sound chain on Muslim's condition). The words 'as if I am looking at' frame a vision, not an eyewitness claim.

Why this is a problem

The same report, through the same chain (Dawud b. Abi Hind, from Abu al-Aliya, from Ibn Abbas), is in Muslim 166a, and there the second scene belongs to a different prophet. At the pass of Harsha the Prophet sees Jonah son of Matta on a red she-camel, wearing a woollen cloak, its halter of palm fibre, calling the talbiya. Nobody stones a jamra. Muslim 166b places both scenes on a journey between Mecca and Medina.

So one of two sound-graded transmissions of a single report has the wrong prophet and a rite that is missing from the other, and Ibn Hibban built a chapter heading on the faulty one: Moses performing the stoning of the jamras 'in his pilgrimage'. In this report, Moses's stoning of the jamras rests on this wording alone.

The Muslim response

Muslims hold that earlier prophets made the pilgrimage to the Ka'ba, so the idea of Moses at the House is not foreign to the tradition. The wording here is best treated as a narrator's slip that merged the Moses scene with the Jonah scene preserved correctly in Muslim. A mistake of one transmitter in one word does not touch the reliability of the report as a whole.

Why it fails

That is probably the right explanation, which is why the entry is rated Basic. But it means a chain graded sound on Muslim's condition carried a text in which a prophet and a ritual were swapped. Ibn Hibban, who compiled the book and wrote its headings, did not notice: he wrote a chapter heading about Moses stoning the jamras 'in his pilgrimage' on the strength of the error. Chain-grading did not catch it. It shows up only when the report is set beside Muslim's text.

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Ibn Hibban: the 'forty years' hadith refutes anyone who says a thousand years separated Ishmael and David Contradictions Pre-Islamic Borrowings Science Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 6228
"The report that refutes the claim of whoever asserts that between Ishmael and David there were a thousand years. ... I said: Messenger of God, which mosque was set up on earth first? He said: The Sacred Mosque. I said: Then which? He said: The Furthest Mosque [al-Aqsa]. I said: How long was between them? He said: Forty years."

What the hadith says

Abu Dharr asks which mosque was set up on earth first. The Prophet answers: the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, then al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, with forty years between them. The hadith is also Bukhari 3366, and al-Arna'ut grades Ibn Hibban's chain sound on the condition of al-Bukhari and Muslim. The striking part is Ibn Hibban's own heading, not the Prophet's words: 'The report that refutes the claim of whoever asserts that between Ishmael and David there were a thousand years' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6228). He took the hadith literally. If Abraham and Ishmael built the Ka'ba and David and Solomon built the sanctuary in Jerusalem, forty years separate the two generations. Ibn Hajar, quoted in al-Ityubi's commentary on Muslim, calls this conclusion 'sheer impossibility' ('ayn al-muhal).

Why this is a problem

Ibn Hajar gives the reason himself: there was, 'by agreement', a long time between Abraham's building of the House and Moses, and 'the Qur'an states that David's killing of Goliath came some time after Moses'. The Qur'an credits Abraham and Ishmael with raising the House (Q 2:127). The canonical hadith says forty years separate the two sanctuaries. Read as Ibn Hibban read it, together with Abraham's building of the House and the report Ibn Hajar cites from al-Nasa'i in which Solomon 'built Bayt al-Maqdis', the hadith collapses centuries of sacred history into a single generation.

This is not a fringe misreading. A major hadith master took a sound hadith at its word and turned it into a chronological rule, and the later scholars could escape the absurd result only by positing earlier founders (Adam, the angels, Shem, Jacob or an unnamed saint) for whom, in our view, there is no sound evidence. The problem lies in the hadith he was reading, not only in his heading.

The Muslim response

The commentators answer, as summarised by Ibn Hajar, that the forty years separate the first foundations of the two sanctuaries, not Abraham's Ka'ba and Solomon's temple. Al-Khattabi suggested that some friend of God laid the first foundation of al-Aqsa before David and Solomon, who later added to it and enlarged it. Others named Adam, the angels, Shem son of Noah, or Jacob as the first founder. Ibn Hajar prefers Ibn al-Jawzi's explanation and supports the view that Adam founded both mosques, citing Ibn Hisham's Kitab al-Tijan. Abraham and Solomon then rebuilt what already existed. Ibn Hibban simply erred in assuming the builders.

Why it fails

No Qur'anic verse or hadith says that Adam or the angels founded al-Aqsa. The candidates multiply (Adam, the angels, Shem, Jacob, an unnamed saint) because the reconciliation needs a builder, and the only source Ibn Hajar cites for Adam building the Jerusalem sanctuary is Ibn Hisham's Kitab al-Tijan. The harmonisation is driven by the need to rescue the number forty.

Ibn Hibban's reading was the natural one for a Muslim who knew that Abraham built the Ka'ba and that David and Solomon were linked with Jerusalem. He drew the obvious conclusion and stated it confidently in a book called Sahih, and his successors had to call it an impossibility.

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'A man of Quraysh has the strength of two men not of Quraysh' Governance Moral Problems Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 6265
"The man of Quraysh has the strength of two men not of Quraysh. Someone asked Ibn Shihab [al-Zuhri]: What does he mean by that? He said: Nobility of judgement."

What the hadith says

Jubayr b. Mut'im reports the Prophet saying that a man of Quraysh has the strength of two men from outside Quraysh. A questioner asked the Successor al-Zuhri what was meant, and he answered: 'nobility of judgement' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6265; al-Zuhri's answer on the next page). Ibn Hibban heads it: 'God's giving the Qurashi, of judgement, double what the non-Qurashi is given.' The gloss is al-Zuhri's, not the Prophet's; the hadith itself says only 'strength'. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu sahih, noting that al-Hakim graded it sound on the condition of al-Bukhari and Muslim and al-Dhahabi agreed, and al-Albani lists it as sahih on al-Bukhari's condition (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 1697).

Why this is a problem

The hadith assigns a fixed advantage by birth: one member of the Prophet's tribe equals two men of any other. Al-Zuhri's explanation moves the advantage from the body to the mind, but it remains an inherited superiority. Ibn Hibban states it as a divine allotment: God gives a Qurashi double the judgement of anyone else.

The context shows what it was used for. The very next entry in Ibn Hibban is headed 'the rule over the Muslims will be in Quraysh until the Hour', and an editorial note on the same page (al-Arna'ut's footnote to the hadith before it) quotes al-Qadi: 'the requirement that [the caliph] be a Qurashi is the position of all the scholars', with the claim that the Companions agreed on it. A saying that ranks one Arab tribe above all others, graded sound by al-Arna'ut and al-Albani, sits immediately before the entry that keeps rule in that tribe until the Hour.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer from al-Zuhri's own gloss: the 'strength' is good judgement, a recognition of the experience Quraysh had in leading the Arabs, not a claim of physical or racial superiority. Islam teaches that the noblest in God's sight is the most pious, and the Prophet's leadership rule for Quraysh was tied to their upholding the religion, as al-Arna'ut notes from Bukhari's version 'as long as they establish the religion'.

Why it fails

If the point were experience, it would describe a generation, not every Qurashi for all time, and it would not be phrased as a fixed ratio of one to two. Ibn Hibban did not read it as a compliment to a generation either: his heading says God gives the Qurashi double. The piety principle and this hadith pull in opposite directions, and Ibn Hibban placed this hadith directly before the rule that keeps the caliphate in Quraysh.

Al-Zuhri's gloss is also only a Successor's explanation. The words attributed to the Prophet speak of 'strength' without qualification.

Check it yourself

'The companions of the Messiah stayed on his sunna and guidance for two hundred years' Jesus / Christology Scripture Integrity Basic Sahih Ibn Hibban 6236
"God took David from among his companions, and they were neither tempted nor did they change anything. And the companions of the Messiah remained on his sunna and his guidance for two hundred years."

What the hadith says

Abu al-Darda' reports the Prophet saying that when God took David, his companions were neither led astray nor altered anything, and that the companions of the Messiah kept to his sunna and guidance for two hundred years (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6236). Ibn Hibban heads it: 'The length of time for which the community of Jesus remained on his guidance.' Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu da'if (weak chain): al-Wadin b. Ata had a poor memory. He quotes Ibn Kathir, 'a strange hadith, and its attribution to the Prophet is doubtful', and Abu Hatim, who said its narrator Nasr b. Alqama never met Jubayr b. Nufayr. Al-Albani calls it munkar (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 5766), while al-Bazzar called its chain hasan.

Why this is a problem

The report is weak, but it was placed in a book called Sahih, and taken at its word it creates a problem for the Islamic account of Christianity. It says Jesus's followers kept his way faithfully for two centuries. The Qur'an denies that Jesus was killed or crucified (Q 4:157). Yet in 1 Corinthians 15:3-6 Paul hands on, as what he had 'received', that 'Christ died for our sins', was buried and rose on the third day, and appeared to Cephas, to the twelve, and to more than five hundred people, 'of whom the greater part remain unto this present'. That is a teaching from within the lifetime of eyewitnesses, well inside the two hundred years, and Paul says the other apostles preached the same: 'whether it were I or they, so we preach' (15:11).

If the hadith is right, the earliest followers held the faith they handed on, and that faith included the death and resurrection of Jesus. If it is wrong, Ibn Hibban's Sahih contains a false saying of the Prophet about the history of another religion.

The Muslim response

Most Muslim graders reject the report: al-Arna'ut calls the chain weak and al-Albani calls the hadith munkar, so it proves nothing. Those Muslims who do use it read it the other way: as dating the corruption of Jesus's message to the period after the first two centuries, which fits the Islamic belief that the original Gospel was later altered.

Why it fails

On the chain the response is right; the entry is rated Basic. The second reading does not survive the evidence. Paul's letter, whose authorship is not disputed, already teaches the death and resurrection of Jesus while, by his own statement, most of the five hundred witnesses were still alive, so a corruption dated after two hundred years comes too late. The report helps the Muslim case only as long as it is not taken seriously; taken at its word, it cuts against the Qur'an.

Check it yourself

'Was Adam a prophet?' 'Yes, one spoken to.' 'How long between him and Noah?' 'Ten qarns' Science Pre-Islamic Borrowings Moderate Sahih Ibn Hibban 6190
"A man said: Messenger of God, was Adam a prophet? He said: Yes, one spoken to [by God]. He said: How long was there between him and Noah? He said: Ten qarns."

What the hadith says

Abu Umama reports that a man asked the Prophet whether Adam was a prophet. He answered that he was, and that God spoke to him. Asked how long separated Adam from Noah, he said: 'ten qarns' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6190). Ibn Hibban heads it: 'The centuries (qurun) that were between Adam and Noah.' Qarn can mean a century or a generation. Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu sahih (sound chain), and his note records that Ibn Kathir called it 'on the condition of Muslim', and that al-Hakim graded it sound on Muslim's condition with al-Dhahabi agreeing. The dorar.net card gives the same verdict.

Why this is a problem

Whichever meaning qarn has, the answer reproduces the scheme of Genesis 5. Genesis counts ten generations from Adam to Noah: Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech and Noah. Adding the ages at which each father begot his son gives, by our arithmetic, 1,056 years from Adam to Noah's birth: about ten centuries. Read as centuries, or with Genesis's own figures for the generations, a sound-graded hadith thus places the first man roughly a thousand years before Noah, inside the biblical timescale.

Islam teaches that Adam was the first human being and a prophet. Modern science dates the emergence of Homo sapiens to around 300,000 years ago. A gap of ten centuries, or ten long-lived generations, between the first man and Noah cannot be fitted to that history.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that qarn often means 'generation', a span of no fixed length, so the hadith gives no number of years. Others accept that it gives a short chronology for the line of prophets, without treating it as a statement about the whole of human prehistory. The hadith is about the prophets, not a lesson in anthropology.

Why it fails

Reading qarn as 'generation' does not loosen the timeline. It matches the ten-generation scheme of Genesis (counting Adam and Noah), and the hadith offers no reason to stretch those generations across hundreds of thousands of years. The second answer works only if Adam was not the first human, but the hadith calls him a prophet to whom God spoke, and Islamic teaching makes him the father of mankind. The report is graded sound by al-Arna'ut, al-Hakim and al-Dhahabi, so it cannot be set aside as weak.

Check it yourself

The angel of rain shows the Prophet the red soil where his umma will kill Husayn Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Governance Basic Sahih Ibn Hibban 6742
"The angel said to him: Do you love him? He said: Yes. He said: Your umma will kill him. If you wish, I will show you the place where he will be killed. ... He brought him sand, or red earth."

What the hadith says

Anas b. Malik reports that the angel of rain asked his Lord's permission to visit the Prophet, and it was Umm Salama's day. The Prophet told her to guard the door, but the boy Husayn forced his way in and leapt onto the Prophet's back while the Prophet kissed him. The angel asked whether he loved him, said 'your umma will kill him', and offered to show the place. He took a handful from it and brought sand or red earth, which Umm Salama put in her garment. The Successor Thabit al-Bunani added: 'We used to say it is Karbala' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6742). Ibn Hibban heads it: 'This umma's killing of the son of the Chosen One's daughter.' Al-Arna'ut grades it hadith hasan, isnaduhu da'if: the chain is weak, but supporting reports raise the hadith to 'good'. The weak link is Umara b. Zadhan, weakened by al-Daraqutni, al-Saji and others and trusted by Ibn Hibban, al-'Ijli and others. Al-Albani says the narrators are trustworthy except Umara, 'truthful but making many mistakes'.

Why this is a problem

This is a prophecy recorded long after the event it foretells. Its key detail, the place, is not in the angel's words at all: 'Karbala' is Thabit's comment, introduced with 'we used to say'. The weak link sits exactly where the editor's own note warns. Al-Arna'ut quotes Ahmad as saying that Umara b. Zadhan 'narrates objectionable reports from Thabit from Anas', and this report comes through Umara, from Thabit, from Anas.

The 'supporting reports' that lift it to hasan are, on the editor's own page, of uneven quality: one through a narrator only Ibn Hibban trusted (Ali's), one with a break and weakness in its chain (Umm al-Fadl's), one whose narrators are 'deemed trustworthy, with weakness in some' (Abu Umama's), though others are stronger: one of al-Tabarani's chains for Umm Salama has trustworthy narrators, Ahmad's Aisha-or-Umm Salama version has narrators of al-Bukhari and Muslim, and al-Haythami calls the Abu al-Tufayl chain good. Prophecies of Husayn's death multiplied in the tradition, and the more of them there are, the more they look like a theme being developed after the fact.

The Muslim response

Sunni and Shi'i Muslims alike cite this report as a true prophecy of Husayn's martyrdom. Al-Arna'ut grades the hadith hasan because the same event is reported from Umm Salama, Abu Umama, Aisha or Umm Salama, Abu al-Tufayl and others, and he notes that one of Ahmad's chains for the Aisha-or-Umm Salama version has narrators who are trustworthy men of al-Bukhari and Muslim. Thabit's identification of Karbala simply records what the people of his time understood.

Why it fails

Grading by supporting reports cannot settle when a prophecy took shape. Every collection that records these reports was compiled after Husayn's death, so their number shows how widely the story spread, not that the Prophet said it. The single report here rests on a narrator Ahmad flagged for this very route, and the one concrete detail, Karbala, is admitted to be a later identification. That is why the entry is rated Basic.

Check it yourself

Young Muhammad twice set out for a night's entertainment in Mecca, stopped at a wedding's singing and pipes, and fell asleep Prophetic Character Moral Problems Basic Sahih Ibn Hibban 6272
"I never intended any of the shameful things the people of the Jahiliyya intended except twice, and God protected me from both. ... I heard singing, and the sound of tambourines and pipes. ... I amused myself with that singing and that sound until my eyes overcame me and I slept, and nothing woke me but the touch of the sun."

What the hadith says

Ali b. Abi Talib reports the Prophet saying that he only twice intended one of the 'shameful things' (qabih) of the Jahiliyya, and God protected him both times. As a young man herding his family's sheep above Mecca, he asked a Qurashi companion to watch his flock so that he could spend the night in Mecca 'as the young men do'. At the first house he heard singing, tambourines and pipes: a man of Quraysh was marrying a woman of Quraysh. He 'amused himself' with the singing until sleep overcame him, and only the heat of the sun woke him. The next night the same thing happened. 'By God, I never intended anything bad of what the people of the Jahiliyya did after those two, until God honoured me with His prophethood' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 6272; end of text on the next page). Ibn Hibban heads it: 'The report that refutes whoever claims that the Prophet followed the religion of his people before revelation.' Al-Arna'ut grades it isnaduhu hasan and quotes Ibn Hajar, through al-Suyuti: 'its chain is good and connected, its narrators trustworthy'. 'Pipes' (mazamir) is the editor's correction of a copying error.

Why this is a problem

The 'shameful thing' the young Muhammad set out for was the young men's night entertainment (samar) in Mecca, and all the text shows of it is a wedding celebration with singing, tambourines and pipes. It mentions nothing else: no wine, no women. Yet he names it as a vice of the Jahiliyya from which God had to protect him, and the protection consisted of making him fall asleep before he could take part.

In Medina the same entertainment at a wedding is approved. In Bukhari 5162 the Prophet asks Aisha after a bride has been led to her Ansari husband: 'Did you not have any amusement (lahw) with you? The Ansar like amusement.' In Bukhari 5147 girls beat tambourines and sing at a wedding in his presence. The word he used for his own youthful pleasure in the singing, lahawtu, comes from the same root as the lahw he later recommends.

The Muslim response

Muslims cite the report, as Ibn Hibban did, as proof that God protected the Prophet from the habits of the Jahiliyya even before he was a prophet. What he set out for was the samar, the young men's night-long entertainment in Mecca, not simply a wedding song, and sleep overcame him before he could take part in it. Intending something and being prevented is not a sin, and the story shows God's care for the future prophet.

Why it fails

The report itself describes what he found: singing and instruments at a wedding, which he enjoyed until he fell asleep. If the night's entertainment, of which the text shows only this music, was shameful enough to require divine intervention in Mecca, it is hard to see why the Prophet asked for it at a wedding in Medina. Either wedding music is a vice or it is not. And the 'protection' depends on the Prophet falling asleep, not on any choice of his own, so the report shows a young man who wanted to go, not one who refused. It is rated Basic because it is a minor anecdote.

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Ibn Khuzayma's chapter: 'mothers are recommended to stop nursing their babies on Ashura' Ritual Absurdities Moral Problems Strange / Obscure Moderate Sahih Ibn Khuzayma 2089
"He used to revere it. He would call for his sucklings and the sucklings of Fatima, spit into their mouths, and order their mothers not to nurse them until nightfall."

What the hadith says

Ibn Khuzayma heads a chapter: 'Recommendation that mothers stop nursing their infants on the day of Ashura, out of reverence for the day of Ashura, if the report is sound, for there is something in my heart about Khalid b. Dhakwan.' Khalid b. Dhakwan is not in the nursing report; he narrates the chapter's first report, from al-Rubayyi' (2088). The nursing report comes from Razina, a servant of the Prophet, through her daughter Amat Allah, then Umayna and 'Ulayla bint al-Kumayt: asked about Ashura, Razina said the Prophet used to revere it. He would call for his own and Fatima's nursing babies, spit into their mouths, and tell their mothers not to nurse them until night (Sahih Ibn Khuzayma 2089). A second route (2090) adds: 'and God used to suffice them.' Al-Albani notes isnaduhu da'if (weak chain). In al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 6749 he grades it da'if, quoting al-Haythami that he could find no biography for 'Ulayla or the women above her. He adds that Ibn Khuzayma's doubt about Khalid b. Dhakwan is an unexplained criticism, since al-Bukhari and Muslim both rely on him.

Why this is a problem

The chapter is not a stray report. Ibn Khuzayma, compiling a book he called Sahih, wrote a heading that makes it 'recommended' for mothers to withhold milk from their babies for a whole day to honour a holy day, and attached a report in which the Prophet orders it for his own and his daughter's infants. The only thing keeping the babies safe is a miracle: the Prophet's spittle, or God's provision.

The practice it extends is canonical. In Muslim 1136a the Prophet's message about Ashura leads al-Rubayyi' and her people in the Ansar villages to make their small children fast; when a child cried for food they gave it a toy made of wool until the time to break the fast. Ibn Khuzayma's own chapter places that report first (2088). The report about sucklings takes the same logic one step further, from small children to infants at the breast.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars reject the report: al-Albani grades it weak because its women narrators are unknown, and Ibn Khuzayma himself made the recommendation conditional with 'if the report is sound'. No school of Islamic law requires mothers to stop nursing on Ashura. The report also says the infants were sufficed by the Prophet's blessing, so it describes a miracle, not a general practice.

Why it fails

On the chain the response is right, and the entry claims neither that the practice is law nor that any child was harmed. But it understates what the compiler did. The doubt Ibn Khuzayma expressed concerned Khalid b. Dhakwan, whom al-Albani shows to be reliable; the weakness lies in the unknown women. With that doubt only, Ibn Khuzayma still turned the report into a chapter of recommendation for all mothers, not a miracle story about one household. And the canonical toy-of-wool report shows that making children go hungry for Ashura was part of the practice the tradition preserved.

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'Adam came to the House a thousand times, never once riding, from India on his feet' Pre-Islamic Borrowings Strange / Obscure Science Basic Sahih Ibn Khuzayma 2792
"Adam came to the House a thousand times, never once riding on any of them, from India on his feet."

What the hadith says

Ibn Abbas reports the Prophet saying that Adam came to the House, the Ka'ba, a thousand times, never riding, walking from India (Sahih Ibn Khuzayma 2792). Ibn Khuzayma heads the chapter: 'The number of Adam's pilgrimages and the manner of his pilgrimage, if the report is sound, for there is something in my heart about this al-Qasim b. Abd al-Rahman.' Al-Albani notes isnaduhu da'if jiddan (very weak chain) because of al-Qasim, who is al-Ansari. In al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 5092 he cites Ibn Ma'in calling al-Qasim 'very weak' and al-Mundhiri calling him 'flimsy'. The dorar.net cards record Ibn Khuzayma as having paused on its soundness.

Why this is a problem

The report attributes to the Prophet a piece of sacred geography: Adam lived in India and walked to the Ka'ba a thousand times. It assumes a Ka'ba that stood in Adam's day, a pilgrimage rite performed by the first man, and a lifespan long enough for a thousand journeys of that length on foot. None of this has any support outside the tradition itself.

Ibn Khuzayma doubted the narrator, but he still opened a chapter on 'the number of Adam's pilgrimages and the manner of his pilgrimage' and put this report in it. It then travelled further. Al-Mundhiri cites it in his al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib, a collection of hadith meant to encourage good deeds, and al-Albani criticises three modern editors of that book for calling it merely 'weak' rather than 'very weak'.

The Muslim response

Muslim graders reject the report as very weak, and Ibn Khuzayma himself signalled his doubt in the chapter title. No Muslim is required to believe that Adam walked from India to Mecca a thousand times; the belief that he built or visited the House rests on other reports, and this one adds nothing that binds anyone.

Why it fails

That is correct, and the entry is rated Basic for it. The point is the life the report had despite its weakness. It was placed in a Sahih under its own chapter heading and carried into al-Mundhiri's book of encouragements, where modern editors still had to be corrected about how weak it is. Collectors who doubted a chain often transmitted the report anyway, and once in circulation it stayed there.

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Wudu between two acts of intercourse, 'for it is more invigorating for the return' Sexual Issues Ritual Absurdities Basic Sahih Ibn Hibban 1211
"When one of you comes to his wife and then wants to return, let him perform wudu, for it is more invigorating for the return."

What the hadith says

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri reports the Prophet saying that a man who has had intercourse with his wife and wants to do so again should first perform wudu, 'for it is more invigorating for the return' (Sahih Ibn Hibban 1211). Ibn Hibban heads it 'The reason for which this was commanded', and adds after it that the narrator Muslim b. Ibrahim 'is alone in this last wording' (1211, note). Al-Arna'ut grades the chain sahih, and his note (continued) records that al-Hakim graded it sound on the condition of al-Bukhari and Muslim with al-Dhahabi agreeing. The command itself, without the reason, is canonical: Muslim 308, Abu Dawud 220 and Tirmidhi 141.

Why this is a problem

The canonical hadith gives a rule of ritual behaviour without a reason. Ibn Hibban's version supplies one, and it is not about purity but about the man's sexual vigour: the ablution is recommended because it makes him readier for the next act. Ibn Hibban did not treat the clause as a side remark. He made it the heading: 'the reason for which this was commanded'.

So on this report the purpose of the washing is to make the man more energetic for the next act, and a hadith master presents that as the reason for the Prophet's command.

The Muslim response

Muslims see no difficulty in a practical benefit being attached to a religious practice: Islamic rules often serve both worship and well-being. The command is sound on any account. The extra clause rests on a single narrator, as Ibn Hibban himself pointed out, so it need not be taken as the main purpose of the rule.

Why it fails

This is a minor point, and the entry is rated Basic. The response is fair that Ibn Hibban flagged the wording as a single narrator's, but he still chose it as the stated reason for the command, and al-Arna'ut, al-Hakim and al-Dhahabi accept the chain. It shows how readily a ritual rule in the hadith could be given a bodily, sexual rationale, and how a compiler could make that rationale the stated reason in his chapter heading.

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A father tells how he threw his little daughter into a well; Muhammad weeps, then says the Jahiliyya is wiped clean Pre-Islamic Borrowings Moral Problems Prophetic Character Moderate Sunan al-Darimi 2
"God has put away from the people of the Jahiliyya what they did, so begin your deeds anew."

What the hadith says

A man came to the Prophet and said: "We were people of the Jahiliyya who worshipped idols, and we used to kill our children." He had a daughter who, once she was old enough to answer, was delighted whenever he called her. One day he called her and she followed him to a well belonging to his family not far away. "I took her by the hand and threw her into the well, and the last I heard of her she was saying: Father! Father!" The Prophet wept until tears ran from his eyes. When one of those sitting with him rebuked the man for grieving the Prophet, the Prophet said "Leave him, he is asking about what troubles him", had the story told again, and wept until the tears ran onto his beard. Then he gave the ruling quoted above (Sunan al-Darimi 2). It is the second report in al-Darimi's Sunan, in the chapter on the ignorance and misguidance of people before the Prophet's mission; sunnah.com has it under the same number. It is told by al-Wadin b. Ata, who was not a Companion and names none, so it is mursal. The editor, Husayn Salim Asad, says its narrators are reliable but it is mursal, and that al-Darimi alone transmits it.

Why this is a problem

The father is not describing a custom he watched. He is confessing that he led his trusting little girl to a well and threw her in while she called for him. The Quran itself treats such a killing as a crime the victim will be asked about: "when the girl buried alive is asked for what sin she was killed" (Q 81:8-9). Yet the answer he receives contains no penalty, no blood-money, no expiation and no word about the girl. His tears are acknowledged; her claim disappears. The conversion of the killer is enough to make the murder of a child simply drop out of the account.

The report is weak by hadith standards, but the principle it illustrates is not. In Sahih Muslim 121 the Prophet tells Amr b. al-As that Islam demolishes what came before it. Al-Darimi's story shows what that principle means when it is applied to the worst case imaginable, and he placed it second in his collection, in its opening chapter.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that Islam wipes out the sins of disbelief for anyone who enters it: "Say to those who have disbelieved that if they cease, what has previously occurred will be forgiven for them" (Q 8:38), and Islam demolishes what came before it (Muslim 121). Repentance, not punishment, is the remedy for what a person did before Islam. The Prophet's tears show his compassion for the girl, and the report itself is mursal and found only in al-Darimi.

Why it fails

The response restates the rule; it does not defend it. Forgiveness of sin is a matter between a person and God, but this ruling also closes the earthly account: the man is told to start his deeds afresh, and nothing is said about anything owed. The victim is not an abstraction but a child whose last words the killer has just repeated, and the Prophet's tears change nothing in the outcome.

Weakness of the chain does not rescue the doctrine. Even if this exact conversation never happened, the canonical principle stands, and al-Darimi, a hadith master, saw fit to place this story near the start of his collection. The point is not whether one father was absolved but that the system has no place in it for what was owed to his daughter.

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Umar beats a man bloody, again and again, for asking about the ambiguous verses of the Quran, then bars Muslims from sitting with him Governance Scripture Integrity Hudud Moderate Sunan al-Darimi 146, Sunan al-Darimi 150
"He beat him with them until he left his back covered in sores, then left him until he healed, then went back to him."

What the hadith says

Al-Darimi gives two reports about a man named Sabigh. In the first, Sulayman b. Yasar says Sabigh came to Medina and began asking about the ambiguous (mutashabih) parts of the Quran. Umar sent for him, having prepared palm stalks. "Who are you?" "I am the servant of God, Sabigh." Umar took a stalk and struck him, saying "I am the servant of God, Umar", and kept beating him until his head bled, until Sabigh said: "Enough, Commander of the Faithful: what I used to find in my head has gone" (Sunan al-Darimi 146). In the second, Nafi' says Sabigh had been asking about things in the Quran among the Muslim armies until Amr b. al-As sent him from Egypt to Umar. Umar told him "you ask about innovated things", had fresh palm branches brought, and beat him as quoted, twice, letting him heal in between. When he called for him a third time Sabigh said: "If you want to kill me, kill me decently; if you want to cure me, by God I am cured." Umar sent him home and wrote to Abu Musa that no Muslim should sit with him. When Abu Musa reported that his repentance was sincere, Umar allowed people to sit with him again (Sunan al-Darimi 150). Both are reports about Umar, not sayings of the Prophet. The editor, Husayn Salim Asad, says the first has reliable narrators but a broken chain (Sulayman b. Yasar did not meet Umar), and the second has a weak chain because of Abdullah b. Salih.

Why this is a problem

Nothing in either report says Sabigh preached anything, raised a revolt or insulted anyone. The first says only that he asked about the ambiguous verses; the second, that he asked about things in the Quran. The ruler's answer is to beat him until his head bled, or, in the longer version, to flog his back into sores, let it heal and flog it again, until the man says his doubts are gone and begs either to be killed or released. Then he is shunned by order until he is judged to have repented.

The Quran itself says some of its verses are unclear (Q 3:7), and in Bukhari 4547 the Prophet tells his followers to beware of those who pursue them. Al-Darimi files both Sabigh reports under the chapter 'whoever feared giving fatwas and disliked hair-splitting and innovation', offering Umar's whip as the model response to questions about scripture.

The Muslim response

Muslims reply that Sabigh was not an innocent enquirer but someone stirring up doubt by chasing the ambiguous verses, which the Quran condemns (Q 3:7). Umar, as ruler, gave him a discretionary punishment (ta'zir) to protect the community, and the story ends well: Sabigh repented and was allowed back into Muslim company. Both chains are also defective by the editor's own verdict.

Why it fails

The claim that Sabigh was spreading discord is read into the text, not taken from it; the reports describe questions. And the outcome is not presented as a regrettable excess but as a cure: the beating continues until the man declares the doubts gone, and his social rehabilitation depends on an official certifying his repentance. That is the logic of punishing belief, not conduct.

The weak chains matter less than the fact that al-Darimi, a hadith master, recorded the story twice and gave it a place in his chapter on avoiding innovation, alongside the canonical warning against those who pursue the ambiguous verses. The tradition remembered the second caliph beating a man over questions about the Quran and held it up with approval.

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Drought in Medina: A'isha tells them to open holes from the Prophet's grave to the sky, and the rain pours Ritual Absurdities Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Moderate Sunan al-Darimi 93
"Look to the Prophet's grave and make openings from it to the sky, so that there is no roof between it and the sky."

What the hadith says

Abu al-Jawza' Aws b. Abdullah says the people of Medina suffered a severe drought and complained to A'isha. She gave the instruction quoted above. "They did it, and we were given rain until the grass grew and the camels grew so fat that they split with fat, so it was called the Year of Splitting" (Sunan al-Darimi 93). Al-Darimi files it in the chapter 'How God honoured His Prophet after his death'. It is A'isha's instruction, not a saying of the Prophet. The editor, Husayn Salim Asad, says its narrators are reliable and it stops at A'isha (mawquf). IslamQA (answer 103585) calls it weak and quotes al-Albani (al-Tawassul, p. 128), who gives three reasons: Sa'id b. Zayd is weak, it is only A'isha's opinion, and Abu al-Nu'man became confused in old age; it also quotes Ibn Taymiyya calling it unsound and its chain unestablished.

Why this is a problem

This is a rain rite centred on a grave. When the city needs rain, the remedy is not prayer, as in the canonical rain report (Bukhari 1010, where Umar asks al-Abbas to pray for rain), but uncovering the Prophet's tomb to the sky. The rain comes, and in abundance. A hadith master preserved it as a proof of how God honours the Prophet after his death.

Salafi scholars treat grave-centred petition as close to idolatry, and Sufis cite this report for seeking blessing through the Prophet. Both sides are reading the same collection. Even the IslamQA answer that rejects the report concedes that, if sound, it would establish a posthumous wonder of the Prophet, "the blessing of his pure body". In the same answer, the quotation from Ibn Taymiyya's Iqtida' mentions the report, introduced with "it has been narrated" (ruwiya) and without a further objection there, as A'isha uncovering the grave so the rain would come down, "for it is a mercy that descends on his grave".

The Muslim response

IslamQA answers that the report is weak (al-Albani, Ibn Taymiyya), and that even if it were sound it would be A'isha's own judgement, not a proof for seeking help from the Prophet at his grave: nobody in it asks him for rain or addresses him. Ibn Taymiyya adds, as quoted there, that the story is historically false, because in A'isha's lifetime the room had no such opening; it was partly roofed and partly open, and the window was made only after al-Walid b. Abd al-Malik enlarged the mosque.

Why it fails

The historical objection is the strongest answer, and it is a serious one. But the gradings are split: the editor of the Asad edition passes all the narrators, while al-Albani's case rests partly on Abu al-Nu'man's old-age confusion, and on that point his argument is only that no one knows whether al-Darimi heard the report before or after it (his first reason, the weakness of Sa'id b. Zayd, is separate). And the answer that 'no one asked him for anything' misses the point. The rite treats the Prophet's grave as a channel through which rain-bringing mercy flows once it faces the sky, which is exactly how al-Darimi presented it and how Ibn Taymiyya himself paraphrased it in the Iqtida' passage.

What remains is a report in a major early collection, filed under the Prophet's posthumous honours, that commends a grave rite to the community through the Prophet's widow. Later scholars had to disarm it, and they disagreed about how.

Check it yourself

During the sack of Medina, Sa'id b. al-Musayyib knew the prayer times only by 'a murmur he heard from the Prophet's grave' Strange / Obscure Prophetic Character Basic Sunan al-Darimi 94
"He did not know the time of prayer except by a murmur he heard from the grave of the Prophet."

What the hadith says

Sa'id b. Abd al-Aziz says that in the days of al-Harra (AD 683) no call to prayer and no iqama were given in the Prophet's mosque for three days. The Successor Sa'id b. al-Musayyib did not leave the mosque, "and he did not know the time of prayer except by a murmur (hamhama) he heard from the grave of the Prophet" (Sunan al-Darimi 94). It follows the rain report in al-Darimi's chapter 'How God honoured His Prophet after his death'. It is about a Successor's experience, not a saying of the Prophet. The editor, Husayn Salim Asad, says its narrators are reliable but that Sa'id b. Abd al-Aziz was too young to have witnessed the event or to have heard it from Sa'id b. al-Musayyib, so the chain is broken.

Why this is a problem

The text does not say Sa'id heard a call to prayer; it says a murmur, and later retellings that turn it into an audible adhan go beyond it. But even the murmur is a claim that sound came from the Prophet's grave at each prayer time for three days, and that this served a leading scholar as his prayer clock. Al-Darimi does not report it as a curiosity: it is one of his proofs of the Prophet's posthumous honours, set beside the rain rite at the same grave.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this is at most a wonder (karama) granted to a pious Successor, reported through a chain the editor himself says is broken, so it binds no one. They also hold that prophets are alive in their graves in the life of the intermediate realm (barzakh), so the report does not contradict doctrine even if it is not authentic.

Why it fails

The response is largely right about the chain, which is why this is a minor entry. What it shows is the readiness of a major early collection to place grave wonders among the Prophet's honours, and the response itself invokes a doctrine of prophetic life in the grave that makes such claims hard to rule out in principle. A report that cannot be proved, but whose content the theology happily allows, is exactly how such stories spread and are later embellished into an adhan from the tomb.

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'The Sunna judges over the Quran; the Quran does not judge over the Sunna': al-Darimi makes it a chapter heading Scripture Integrity Logical Inconsistency Moderate Sunan al-Darimi 607
"The Sunna is a judge over the Quran, and the Quran is not a judge over the Sunna."

What the hadith says

The Successor Yahya b. Abi Kathir (d. c. 132 AH) said the words quoted above, and al-Darimi records them through al-Awza'i (Sunan al-Darimi 607). Al-Darimi heads the chapter with the same idea: 'Chapter: the Sunna is a judge over the Book of God'. It is a Successor's maxim, not a saying of the Prophet, and it is not in the six canonical books. The editor, Husayn Salim Asad, grades the chain to Yahya jayyid (good).

Why this is a problem

The Quran presents itself as "a clarification for all things" (Q 16:89). Here an early authority, with a good chain and the approval of a hadith master's chapter heading, ranks the reports about the Prophet above it: the Sunna decides what the Quran means, and the Quran does not decide what the Sunna means. That is a hierarchy in which the book called God's speech cannot correct the human-transmitted reports, while those reports can settle its sense.

This matters because the reports are the less secure source. They were transmitted by fallible narrators and sifted generations later, as entries elsewhere in this catalog show. If the Sunna is the judge, the meaning of the Quran rests on the reliability of that process.

The Muslim response

Muslims explain 'judge' as 'explains and specifies'. The introduction printed with Ibn Hajar's al-Isaba quotes the maxim and explains it in al-Suyuti's words: the Quran needs the Sunna because the Sunna makes it clear and details what it states in general terms; it contains, in its concision, treasures that need someone who knows them to bring them out, and that is the Prophet. The Sunna does not overrule the Quran; it unpacks it.

Why it fails

Al-Suyuti's explanation does not soften the maxim; it confirms it. On his account the Quran is not clear by itself, because its concision hides treasures that only someone else can draw out, while the Sunna needs no such help because it is "clear in itself", as a commentary is plainer than its text. That makes the Quran dependent on the hadith for its meaning, which is precisely what the maxim says.

Nor is this a stray remark. Al-Darimi turned it into a chapter title in one of the earliest hadith collections, and the explanation offered in its defence takes it as given that the Quran cannot be understood without the reports. A scripture described as a clarification for all things ends up needing a second, humanly transmitted corpus to clarify it.

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'If the Quran were put in a skin and thrown into fire, it would not burn' Scripture Integrity Science Strange / Obscure Basic Sunan al-Darimi 3353
"If the Quran were put in a hide and then thrown into the fire, it would not burn."

What the hadith says

Uqba b. Amir says he heard the Prophet say the words quoted above (Sunan al-Darimi 3353). Al-Darimi places it in the chapter on the merit of reciting the Quran; the same saying is in the Musnad of Ahmad (17365). The gradings conflict, mainly over the narrator Ibn Lahi'a. The editor of al-Darimi, Husayn Salim Asad, calls the chain weak. On dorar.net, Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut calls it weak in his edition of the Musnad but hasan (good) in his edition of al-Tahawi's Mushkil al-Athar, and al-Albani calls its chain hasan (al-Silsila al-Sahiha 3562). Al-Haythami notes that Ibn Lahi'a is disputed. In its favour, al-Arna'ut notes elsewhere (Takhrij Siyar A'lam al-Nubala' 8/20) that Abdullah b. Yazid, al-Darimi's narrator, heard from Ibn Lahi'a before his memory declined, so his reports from him are strong.

Why this is a problem

The saying is a plain conditional about a physical object: put the Quran in a leather skin, throw it in the fire, and it will not burn. Written copies of the Quran have always burned like any other writing. The canonical account of the Quran's compilation even ends with Uthman ordering all other Quran material, "in every sheet or volume", to be burned (Bukhari 4987).

So the saying is either false as stated or must be turned into something else. Scholars mostly do the second: the 'skin' becomes the heart of the person who has memorised the Quran, or the 'fire' becomes Hell. Those readings may be pious, but they are not what the words say.

The Muslim response

Muslims read it figuratively: whoever carries the Quran in his heart will not be burned by the Fire of Hell. Some also suggest it was a miracle specific to the Prophet's own time. And the chain is disputed, with al-Darimi's own editor calling it weak.

Why it fails

The figurative reading has to change both key terms. A hide is a container for writing, not a common image for a person's heart, and nothing in the saying mentions Hell. A miracle limited to the Prophet's time is equally absent from the text, which is phrased as a general truth. Taken as it stands, the saying claims the written Quran is physically protected; the figurative readings are later explanations that the words themselves do not give.

The response from weakness is fair as far as it goes, which is why this is a minor entry. But it is not a fringe report: al-Albani and al-Arna'ut, in one of his editions, call the chain good, and it sits in both al-Darimi and Ahmad.

Check it yourself

God recited Ta-Ha and Ya-Sin a thousand years before creating heaven and earth; the angels said 'Blessed the nation it comes down to' Scripture Integrity Strange / Obscure Allah's Character Basic Sunan al-Darimi 3457
"God, blessed and exalted, recited Ta-Ha and Ya-Sin a thousand years before He created the heavens and the earth. When the angels heard the Quran they said: Blessed is a nation on whom this comes down, blessed are the insides that carry this, and blessed are the tongues that speak this."

What the hadith says

Abu Hurayra reports the Prophet as saying the words quoted above (Sunan al-Darimi 3457). Al-Darimi places it in a chapter of its own, 'On the merit of Surat Ta-Ha and Ya-Sin'. Most critics grade it very weak to fabricated, though Ibn Khuzayma included it in his Kitab al-Tawhid among reports he said were soundly transmitted. The editor, Husayn Salim Asad, calls the chain very weak and quotes Ahmad b. Hanbal on the narrator Umar b. Hafs b. Dhakwan: "we abandoned his hadith and burned it." On dorar.net, Ibn Hibban (al-Majruhin) calls it fabricated (mawdu'), al-Albani calls the chain very weak, al-Dhahabi calls it munkar (rejected), and Ibn Kathir, who quotes it in his Tafsir, calls it strange with an objectionable content.

Why this is a problem

The report has God reading out two suras of the Quran a thousand years before the heavens and the earth existed, with angels as the audience, congratulating the future nation that will receive it. It reached one of the earliest hadith collections, under a heading on the virtues of these suras, and was still being quoted centuries later in Ibn Kathir's Tafsir. The critics' verdicts show that a saying of this kind, rejected as fabricated or very weak, could still be attributed to the Prophet in praise of particular suras and find its way into respected books.

It also sits awkwardly with how the Quran describes its own revelation: much of it is presented as responding to events in Muhammad's life, while here two complete suras are recited before anything was created.

The Muslim response

Most of the hadith critics themselves rejected it. Ibn Hibban called it fabricated, al-Albani very weak, al-Dhahabi rejected, and al-Darimi's own editor very weak, naming the narrator whose hadith Ahmad burned. A report in that condition carries no doctrinal weight, and Muslims are not asked to believe it.

Why it fails

The response is correct about the grading, which is why this is a minor entry. Its value is as evidence of how the tradition worked: a report most of its critics call fabricated or very weak was recorded by al-Darimi in its own chapter and quoted in a standard Tafsir, and Muslim readers met it there. The second point, the tension with revelation in response to events, does not depend on this report: the doctrine that the Quran is God's uncreated speech already raises it.

Check it yourself

Umar gives his son a slave-girl: 'Do not touch her, for I have uncovered her'; another father had 'sat from her as a man sits from his wife' Slavery & Captives Sexual Issues Women Moderate Muwatta Malik, Book 28, no. 36
"Do not touch her, for I have uncovered her. ... I sat from her as a man sits from his wife. ... May I give her to my son for him to have intercourse with her?"

What the hadith says

In the Muwatta's book of marriage, Malik has a chapter titled 'Prohibition of a man having intercourse with a slave-girl who belonged to his father'. It opens with a report that "reached" Malik, with no chain, that Umar gave his son a slave-girl and said: "Do not touch her, for I have uncovered her" (Muwatta Malik, Book 28, no. 36). Next, Salim b. Abdullah gives his son a slave-girl and tells him: "Do not go near her, for I wanted her but did not feel up to it" (unnumbered report). Then Abu Nahshal b. al-Aswad tells the jurist al-Qasim b. Muhammad: "I saw a slave-girl of mine uncovered in the moonlight, and I sat from her as a man sits from his wife. She said, 'I am menstruating,' so I got up and have not gone near her since. May I give her to my son for him to have intercourse with her?" Al-Qasim forbade it (no. 37). These are the acts and rulings of Umar, his grandson Salim, a man named Abu Nahshal b. al-Aswad and the jurist al-Qasim b. Muhammad, not sayings of the Prophet. The Umar report is an unsourced balagh (Malik names no chain), and no critic's grading of these reports was found.

Why this is a problem

The rule itself is restrictive: a son may not have a woman his father has touched in this way. The entry does not claim otherwise. The problem is the world the chapter takes for granted. Women are handed from father to son as gifts, and the only legal question asked is how far the father got with her: whether he uncovered her, whether he wanted her and lost interest, whether he sat with her as a man sits with his wife before she told him she was menstruating. In the last case what stopped him was her saying she was menstruating, and his next thought is to pass her on to his son for sex.

No one in the chapter asks the women anything. Their consent, their wishes, and what it means to be gifted within a family after the father has handled them are not legal questions at all. The jurists' care is entirely for the men's boundaries.

The Muslim response

Muslims point out that these reports apply the Quran's ban on marrying "those whom your fathers married" (Q 4:22) to slave-women as well, so that father and son do not share a woman. Far from licensing abuse, the jurists were protecting the family from something they regarded as shameful, and they extended the ban even to touching and looking with desire.

Why it fails

That is a fair account of the rule's purpose, and the entry accepts it. But it answers a question nobody asked. The objection is not that the jurists were too permissive about fathers and sons; it is that the slave-woman appears only as an object whose sexual availability passes down a family line, with her legal status decided by what a man did to her body. The protective rule protects a relationship between men.

The chain of the Umar report is missing, but that does not help much: Malik put it at the head of the chapter, the other two reports have chains, and al-Qasim b. Muhammad was one of the leading jurists of Medina. The picture is of ordinary legal practice, not an isolated anecdote.

Check it yourself

A man kills the man he found with his wife: Ali rules that without four witnesses 'let him be handed over with his rope' Hudud Women Governance Moderate Muwatta Malik, Book 36, no. 18
"I am Abu Hasan. If he does not bring four witnesses, let him be handed over with his rope."

What the hadith says

Sa'id b. al-Musayyib reports that a Syrian called Ibn Khaybari found a man with his wife and killed him, "or killed them both". Mu'awiya could not decide the case, so he wrote to Abu Musa al-Ash'ari to ask Ali about it. Ali, noting that such a thing had not happened in his land, made Abu Musa tell him who was asking, and then gave the ruling quoted above (Muwatta Malik, Book 36, no. 18). "Handed over with his rope" (bi-rummatihi) means given over entirely to the dead man's family for retaliation. Malik places it in the chapter on judgement concerning a man who finds another man with his wife. It is Ali's ruling, not a saying of the Prophet. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut says its narrators are trustworthy, and al-Shafi'i, quoting it in al-Umm, says he knows of no one who disagrees with it (dorar.net cards).

Why this is a problem

The ruling is against the killer as things stand, and the entry does not present it as licensing honour killing. But its condition says what would happen otherwise. If the husband cannot bring four witnesses, he is handed over to be killed; the ruling's own logic is that if he can, he is not. The killing of a man caught with one's wife is therefore not forbidden as such; it is a question of proof. The report does not even distinguish between killing the man and killing "them both".

This matches the canonical account in Muslim 1498. When Sa'd b. Ubada says he would strike such a man with the sword before fetching four witnesses, the Prophet tells him he must wait for witnesses, but then tells the others to listen to their chief: "He is jealous, and I am more jealous than he, and God is more jealous than I." The demand for proof is real; so is the approval of the jealousy behind the sword.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the ruling protects life. A husband may not take the law into his own hands; unless he meets the full standard of proof the law demands, he faces retaliation like any other killer. Ali's ruling, like the Prophet's answer to Sa'd, is a barrier against private vengeance, not a licence for it.

Why it fails

Four witnesses is the standard for proving adultery itself. Here it is borrowed as the standard under which a private killing goes unpunished. So the barrier is conditional, and the condition is about evidence of the wife's and her lover's guilt, not about whether a husband has any right to kill. The rule therefore leaves the act unpunished once the proof is met and turns the trial into a question of how many men saw the couple.

The case is also a revealing piece of history: the question passed, through Abu Musa, between two rival rulers of the early community, Mu'awiya and Ali, and Ali's ruling as reported does not treat the killing of the wife, if that is what happened, as a separate question.

Check it yourself

'I forget, or I am made to forget, so that I may lay down a sunna': a Muwatta saying with no chain Prophetic Character Logical Inconsistency Basic Muwatta Malik, Book 4, no. 2
"I forget, or I am made to forget, so that I may lay down a sunna."

What the hadith says

In the Muwatta's chapter on what to do when one forgets in prayer, Malik says it reached him that the Prophet said the words quoted above (Muwatta Malik, Book 4, no. 2). Malik gives no chain. The critics on dorar.net agree it has none that holds: Ibn al-'Arabi says its chain is not sound, Ibn al-Mulaqqin and Ibn al-Qayyim call it broken (munqati'), Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut says its chain is broken, al-Iraqi says Malik mentions it without a chain, Ibn Uthaymin calls it weak, and al-Albani calls it false and baseless (batil la asla lahu, al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 101). Among the cards, only the late biographer al-Salihi calls it sound. The forgetting itself is canonical; the claim that he is made to forget on purpose is not in the six books.

Why this is a problem

In Bukhari 401 the Prophet explains a mistake in prayer plainly: "I am a human being like you and I forget as you forget, so when I forget, remind me." The Muwatta's saying turns the same lapses into divine design: he forgets, or God makes him forget, so that a rule can be laid down. That converts every error into teaching. If a prophet's mistakes are planned lessons, there is no mistake that could ever count against him.

And the saying that does this has no chain at all. It reached the most respected early law book as something Malik had heard, and stands second in his chapter on forgetfulness in prayer.

The Muslim response

Muslims reply that even though this wording has no chain, its meaning is accepted. The Prophet's lapses in prayer were, in fact, the occasions on which the rules of the prostration of forgetfulness were taught, as Bukhari 401 shows. Nothing in the saying contradicts his being human; it simply explains the wisdom of God in letting him forget.

Why it fails

The response defends the idea while giving up the text. But the idea is the problem. The canonical hadith explains the lapse as ordinary human forgetting; the Muwatta's version adds a purpose that the canonical text does not give and that makes the Prophet's errors unfalsifiable. Accepting the meaning of a saying that the critics say has no chain is a choice to keep the theology the evidence does not support.

The entry is minor, because the critics did their work. Its point is that a chainless saying with a large theological claim sat in the Muwatta for centuries and is still defended for its meaning.

Check it yourself

Ka'b al-Ahbar: 'Were it not for words I say, the Jews would have turned me into a donkey' Magic & Occult Antisemitism Strange / Obscure Basic Muwatta Malik, Book 51, no. 12
"Were it not for words that I say, the Jews would have made me a donkey."

What the hadith says

Malik reports, from Sumayy from al-Qa'qa' b. Hakim, that Ka'b al-Ahbar, a Jewish convert to Islam, said the words quoted above. Asked what the words were, he gave a formula of refuge: "I seek refuge in the mighty Face of God, than whom nothing is mightier, and in the perfect words of God which neither the righteous nor the wicked can pass beyond, and in all the most beautiful names of God, those I know and those I do not know, from the evil of what He created, made and scattered" (Muwatta Malik, Book 51, no. 12). Malik places it in the chapter 'What is commanded of seeking refuge'. These are Ka'b's own words, not the Prophet's. No critic's grading of the report was found on a page that could be linked.

Why this is a problem

The text does not explain what turning a man into a donkey means; it may be meant literally or as a way of saying bewitched or made a fool of. Either way, the claim is that Jews would have worked sorcery on Ka'b had he not protected himself with a formula. The Muwatta, the foundational law book of Medina, preserves this without comment in its chapter of protective prayers, and so passes on, through a convert's testimony, a picture of Jews as hostile sorcerers.

The formula itself is ordinary Muslim devotion. What the chapter adds is the reason for using it.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this is Ka'b's account of his own experience, not revelation, and Muslims are not bound by it. Its lesson is the formula: reliance on God against sorcery, which the Quran affirms is real (Q 2:102). Nothing in it commands hostility to Jews.

Why it fails

That is a fair limit, and the entry is minor for that reason. But Malik chose what to include in a book meant to guide practice, and he included Ka'b's reason along with Ka'b's prayer. The reason is a collective accusation against Jews, and a reader using the formula learns why: to be protected from them. A report does not have to be a command to shape attitudes, and this one was handed down in one of the most respected books of the tradition.

Check it yourself

'A free man is not killed for a slave': al-Daraqutni's reports, against the canonical 'whoever kills his slave, we kill him' Slavery & Captives Hudud Disbelievers Strong Sunan al-Daraqutni 2858, Sunan al-Daraqutni 2860
"A free man is not killed for a slave. ... It is of the sunna that a believer is not killed for an unbeliever, and it is of the sunna that a free man is not killed for a slave."

What the hadith says

In al-Daraqutni's book of penalties and blood-money, Ibn Abbas reports the Prophet saying: "A free man is not killed for a slave" (Sunan al-Daraqutni 2858). Next comes a report that Ali and Ibn Mas'ud said a free man who deliberately kills a slave is killed in retaliation, which al-Daraqutni dismisses: "no proof stands on it, because it is mursal" (Risala ed. 3253). Then Ali is quoted: "It is of the sunna that a believer is not killed for an unbeliever, and it is of the sunna that a free man is not killed for a slave" (Sunan al-Daraqutni 2860). Both reports that state the rule are weak. On dorar.net, al-Bayhaqi calls the Ibn Abbas chain weak, and Ibn Hajar, al-Daraqutni and others point to its narrator Juwaybir, who was abandoned; al-Albani grades the first weak and Ali's report very weak; Ali's report runs through Jabir al-Ju'fi, whom al-Shawkani and others on dorar call abandoned.

Why this is a problem

The weak reports state a rule that prevailed. Under the canonical Tirmidhi 1414 (also Abu Dawud 4515), Samura reports the Prophet saying "Whoever kills his slave, we will kill him." Al-Tirmidhi himself then records how the scholars received it. Ibrahim al-Nakha'i followed it. But al-Hasan al-Basri and Ata held that there is no retaliation between a free man and a slave, for life or limb, "and that is the view of Ahmad and Ishaq"; and Sufyan al-Thawri and the people of Kufa held that a man who kills another's slave is killed for him, but a man who kills his own slave is not.

On every position after al-Nakha'i's that al-Tirmidhi lists, a master who kills his own slave is not put to death for it. The commentary on Bulugh al-Maram quoted on tohed.com adds Malik and al-Shafi'i to the no-retaliation side and cites the Quran: "the free for the free, the slave for the slave" (Q 2:178). Ali's report puts the two inequalities side by side: the unbeliever's life and the slave's life do not equal the believer's and the free man's.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the majority read Q 2:178 as defining retaliation between equals, and that the Samura hadith is itself weak, since al-Hasan's hearing from Samura is disputed. The same commentary explains "we will kill him" as a stern warning, worded to match the crime, as when the Quran calls the recompense of an evil "an evil like it". And the Hanafi school, following the Kufans, does apply retaliation when a free man kills someone else's slave.

Why it fails

The response concedes the substance. A saying that, in its plain words, protects slaves from their masters is reinterpreted as a figure of speech, and the reason given is a reading of Q 2:178 under which a slave's life is not equal to a free man's. The Kufan exception protects the slave of someone else, which is to say another man's property, while leaving the master who kills his own slave outside the reach of retaliation.

The weakness of al-Daraqutni's reports does not matter here, because the law did not need them. What they show is that the rule was also put into the mouths of the Prophet and Ali, and that al-Daraqutni dismissed the contrary report from Ali and Ibn Mas'ud as mursal while recording these two without comment. The weak reports and the prevailing law say the same thing.

Check it yourself

Umar raises a Muslim's blood-money to 12,000 dirhams but leaves Jews and Christians at 4,000 and sets a Magian at 800 Disbelievers Governance Hudud Strong Sunan al-Daraqutni 2848, Sunan al-Daraqutni 2937
"He set the blood-money at twelve thousand, left the blood-money of the People of the Book as it was, and set the Magian's at eight hundred."

What the hadith says

Amr b. Shu'ayb, from his father from his grandfather, reports that the Prophet set blood-money at a hundred camels, each valued at eighty dirhams, so 8,000, and set that of the People of the Book at half the Muslims'. So it stayed under the Prophet and Abu Bakr. Under Umar camels became dear, so he valued them at 120 each and "set the blood-money at twelve thousand, left the blood-money of the People of the Book as it was, and set the Magian's at eight hundred" (Sunan al-Daraqutni 2848). Sa'id b. al-Musayyib says the same in brief: Umar made the blood-money of the Jew and of the Christian 4,000 each, and of the Magian 800 (Sunan al-Daraqutni 2937). These are Umar's rulings, not sayings of the Prophet. Ibn al-Mulaqqin calls the chain of the Umar report sound (dorar.net), as does al-Bayhaqi, but al-Shafi'i calls it broken, and Ibn al-Turkmani notes that Malik and Ibn Ma'in denied Sa'id heard from Umar and that contrary reports from Umar exist (dorar.net). In the Muwatta, Sulayman b. Yasar gives the Magian's blood-money as 800 dirhams, and Malik adds: "that is the practice with us" (Muwatta Malik, Book 43).

Why this is a problem

Blood-money is what the law says must be paid for a life. On Umar's figures a Muslim's life is worth 12,000 dirhams, a Jew's or Christian's 4,000, and a Magian's 800. By our arithmetic from those sums, that is one third and one fifteenth. Even the canonical rule halves it: "the blood-money of the unbeliever is half the blood-money of the believer" (Tirmidhi 1413; Abu Dawud 4583).

The Muwatta records the same discount as the living practice of Medina. Umar b. Abd al-Aziz rules a Jew or Christian at half a free Muslim, and Malik states, on the same page, that a Muslim is not killed for an unbeliever unless he kills him by treachery (Muwatta Malik, Book 43). The schools disagree on the fraction, and the Hanafis made the sums equal; the question for the others was only how large the discount should be.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that blood-money is a compensation rule within a historical legal system, not a statement of human worth. The amounts follow from the different legal relationships between the state and its subjects, the schools disagreed about them, and the Hanafi school gave dhimmis the same blood-money as Muslims. Some reports from Umar also conflict with these figures.

Why it fails

Compensation for a killing is exactly where a legal system states the worth it assigns to a life. A rule that pays a third as much for a dead Jew, and a fifteenth as much for a dead Magian, makes the victim's religion the measure. The Hanafi position shows the inequality was not necessary, but it did not prevail in the other schools, and the canonical half rests on a prophetic report in two of the six books.

The conflicting reports and the dispute over Sa'id's chain cut both ways: the 800 for a Magian is stated independently by Sulayman b. Yasar, and Malik called it the practice of Medina. The figures were not an anomaly; they were the law of the land in the heartland of Islam.

Check it yourself

A'isha: Zayd b. Arqam's jihad with the Prophet is void over a credit sale, 'unless he repents' Strange / Obscure Logical Inconsistency Basic Sunan al-Daraqutni 2640
"Tell Zayd that he has made void his jihad with the Messenger of God, unless he repents."

What the hadith says

Al-'Aliya, the mother of Yunus b. Abi Ishaq, says she and Umm Muhibba went to Mecca and visited A'isha, who seemed to turn away from them when they said they were from Kufa. Umm Muhibba told her she had sold a slave-girl to Zayd b. Arqam al-Ansari for 800 dirhams, payable when he received his stipend, and had then bought her back from him for 600 cash. A'isha said: "What a bad sale and what a bad purchase! Tell Zayd that he has made void his jihad with the Messenger of God, unless he repents." Asked whether she might take back only her capital, A'isha recited the Quran: whoever receives an admonition from his Lord and desists may keep what is past (Q 2:275) (Sunan al-Daraqutni 2640). In a second version, from Abu Ishaq's wife, the seller is the slave mother of Zayd's child (umm walad) and the item a slave boy (Sunan al-Daraqutni 2641). These are A'isha's words, not the Prophet's. Al-Daraqutni himself judges the first chain: "Umm Muhibba and al-'Aliya are unknown; they are not used as proof."

Why this is a problem

Zayd b. Arqam was a Companion who fought alongside the Prophet. In this report a single buy-back transaction, selling on credit at 800 and repurchasing for 600 cash, is enough for the Prophet's widow to declare his jihad with the Prophet void unless he repents. The disguised interest in the deal may be real, but the penalty is the cancellation of his jihad with the Prophet, service Islam ranks among the highest, announced second-hand to a woman from Kufa.

The report was not lost. Al-Daraqutni preserved two versions, and jurists who forbid such buy-back ('ina') sales have used it as evidence.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that A'isha's words were a stern warning about interest disguised as a sale, not a literal cancellation of Zayd's reward, which only God decides; the phrase "unless he repents" shows the way out. And the report is weak by al-Daraqutni's own verdict, since the two women in the chain are unknown.

Why it fails

The response is right that the report is weak, and the entry is minor for that reason. The 'stern warning' reading, though, is not what the text says: "he has made void his jihad" is a statement about a deed already done, and "unless he repents" presupposes that it has taken effect. The report shows how, in this strand of the tradition, a technical breach in trade could be described as wiping out the merit of fighting with the Prophet.

Check it yourself

'Marry women only to their equals, only guardians may marry them off, no dowry under ten dirhams', and Ahmad on how a saying 'became a hadith' Women Scripture Integrity Logical Inconsistency Moderate Sunan al-Daraqutni 3153, Sunan al-Daraqutni 3158
"Do not marry women off except to equals, let none but guardians marry them off, and there is no dowry below ten dirhams. ... Ghiyath b. Ibrahim prompted Dawud al-Awdi ... and it became a hadith."

What the hadith says

Jabir b. Abdullah reports the Prophet as saying the first words quoted above, and al-Daraqutni comments at once: "Mubashshir b. Ubayd is abandoned; his reports are not corroborated" (Sunan al-Daraqutni 3153). A few reports later, in the same chapter on the dowry, he quotes Ahmad b. Hanbal: "Ghiyath b. Ibrahim prompted Dawud al-Awdi with 'from al-Sha'bi, from Ali: no dowry less than ten dirhams', and it became a hadith" (Sunan al-Daraqutni 3158). The critics on dorar.net almost all reject the Jabir report: Ibn Adi calls it false (batil), al-Bayhaqi calls it munkar and its chain utterly weak, Ibn Hajar says its chain is flimsy because Mubashshir is a liar, and Ibn al-Jawzi quotes Ahmad that Mubashshir's reports are fabrications and that he forged hadith. The exception is the Hanafi al-Ayni (Umdat al-Qari 20/195), who argues that a weak report transmitted by several routes rises to hasan.

Why this is a problem

Three legal rules are packed into one saying: women may be married only to men of equal standing (kafa'a), only guardians may contract their marriages, and a dowry has a minimum of ten dirhams. The guardian rule has canonical support elsewhere (Abu Dawud 2085: "no marriage without a guardian"), so the entry does not claim the whole doctrine rests on this report. But the 'equals only' and ten-dirham lines circulated as the Prophet's words through a narrator whom Ahmad called a forger.

Ahmad's remark, preserved by al-Daraqutni himself, shows the mechanism. A narrator is fed a line with a respectable chain attached, he repeats it, "and it became a hadith." That is a contemporary account, from the most famous traditionist of his age, of how legal opinions became prophetic or Companion reports.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this shows the critical method working, not failing. Al-Daraqutni flagged the narrator on the spot, Ahmad exposed the planted line, and later critics called the report false. Muslims are not asked to accept it, and those who hold a minimum dowry or the rules of equality argue for them from other evidence.

Why it fails

The critics deserve credit for this case. Ahmad's comment describes one case, but the case shows a process: a saying inserted into the chain-system by prompting a narrator, which then circulated under respectable names. Detection depended on the critics happening to know which narrator had been prompted. The same method that caught this one is the method that certifies the rest, and Ahmad's own words show that it could be fed.

And the forged texts did not appear at random. They supplied scriptural backing for particular legal positions about who women may marry and what their marriages cost. Here, rules that needed a proof-text acquired one.

Check it yourself

A young servant girl is slow to come; Muhammad, angry, holding a tooth-stick: 'Were it not for fear of retaliation on the Day of Resurrection, I would hurt you with this' Slavery & Captives Prophetic Character Moral Problems Moderate al-Adab al-Mufrad 184
"Were it not for fear of retaliation on the Day of Resurrection, I would have hurt you with this tooth-stick."

What the hadith says

Umm Salama says the Prophet was in her house and called a young servant (wasifa), his or hers. She was slow to come, and anger showed in his face. Umm Salama went to the curtain and found the girl playing; one narrator adds that she was playing with a young lamb or kid, that Umm Salama brought her and said "she swears she did not hear you", and that he had a tooth-stick (siwak) in his hand. He said the words quoted above (al-Adab al-Mufrad 184). Al-Bukhari puts it in his chapter 'Retaliation for the slave', after a report in which Salman tells his servant much the same: "were it not that I fear retaliation, I would have hurt you" (no. 182). The editor's note explains wasifa as a boy or girl who has reached the age of service. Al-Albani grades the report weak in his edition, and on dorar.net al-Busiri calls its chain weak; al-Suyuti marked it hasan, and al-Haythami says the chain of a fuller version is good (jayyid). He did not hit her.

Why this is a problem

The scene is a child servant who did not hear her name because she was playing with a young animal. The Prophet's reaction is visible anger, and his words say plainly that he would have hurt her with what was in his hand, and that only the prospect of retaliation on the Day of Resurrection stopped him.

What restrains him, as the report puts it, is the fear of the retaliation (qawad) she could claim from him on the Day of Resurrection: her claim is deferred to the next world, and the report frames the restraint as the master's fear of paying it. Al-Bukhari's chapter presents the same motive in Salman's words, as the model for how masters should think about their servants. The restraint is real, but it is postponed justice rather than any limit in this world, and the impulse to hurt her is shown as natural.

The Muslim response

Muslims read it as a lesson in restraint. The Prophet was angry but did not strike her; he feared wronging even a servant girl, and the chapter's point is that masters will answer for every blow on the Day of Resurrection. That is a strong protection for the weak, not a licence to beat them. Al-Albani and al-Busiri also grade the report weak.

Why it fails

The response is fair about the outcome: he did not hit her, and the entry says so. But a protection that rests on the master's fear of paying for it in the hereafter gives the servant nothing in this world. The report assumes the master's power over a child's body and asks only whether using it will cost him later.

The grading also does not settle the matter. Al-Albani and al-Busiri call it weak, but al-Haythami calls the chain of the fuller version good and al-Suyuti marked it hasan, and al-Bukhari chose to include it in his book of manners. The picture it gives of the Prophet was accepted by part of the tradition, and its moral, restraint for fear of the hereafter, is the one al-Bukhari's chapter teaches.

Check it yourself

A'isha on raising orphans: 'I beat the orphan until he is stretched out' Women Moral Problems Moderate al-Adab al-Mufrad 142
"I beat the orphan until he is stretched out."

What the hadith says

Shumaysa al-'Atakiyya says that the discipline of orphans was mentioned in A'isha's presence and she said: "I beat the orphan until he yanbasit" (al-Adab al-Mufrad 142). The gloss printed in al-Albani's edition explains the word: "that is, he stretches out on the ground" (al-Albani's edition, p. 76). Others take it in its other sense, until he becomes at ease or compliant. Al-Bukhari gives the report its own chapter, 'Disciplining the orphan'. These are A'isha's words, not the Prophet's. Al-Albani grades the chain sound (sahih al-isnad), and in al-Silsila al-Sahiha says its narrators are those of al-Bukhari and Muslim except Shumaysa, who is reliable (dorar.net).

Why this is a problem

An orphan is one of the people the Quran most often tells Muslims to protect. Here the Mother of the Believers, whose words carry great authority in Sunni Islam, describes her own method of disciplining one: she beats him. On the reading printed in al-Albani's own edition, she beats him until he is stretched out on the ground. Al-Bukhari makes this the whole content of his chapter on disciplining the orphan, and the chain is graded sound.

The entry does not claim the word must mean collapse. But even on the gentler reading, until he becomes compliant, beating is the tool and submission is the goal, and it is applied to a fatherless child.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that disciplining an orphan in one's care as one would one's own child is part of raising him well, and that neglecting it would be its own kind of harm. Yanbasit means until he becomes upright or at ease, not until he is injured. A'isha was describing firm upbringing, which in her time included light physical correction.

Why it fails

The gentler sense is possible, but it is not the one the edition itself prints, and it does not remove the beating. Al-Bukhari, who arranged his book to teach manners, chose this report as the whole of his chapter on disciplining the orphan. A child without a father is precisely the child whose treatment depends entirely on the adult who has him, and the sound-graded practice the Prophet's wife describes is to beat him until he yanbasit.

Check it yourself

Ibn Umar greets a man, learns he is a Christian, and goes back: 'Return my greeting to me'; Uqba chases a Christian to withdraw God's mercy Disbelievers Moderate al-Adab al-Mufrad 1115, al-Adab al-Mufrad 1112
"Return my greeting to me. ... God's mercy and His blessings are for the believers."

What the hadith says

Abd al-Rahman reports that Ibn Umar passed a Christian and greeted him, and the man returned the greeting. Then Ibn Umar was told he was a Christian. "When he knew, he went back to him and said: Return my greeting to me" (al-Adab al-Mufrad 1115). Al-Bukhari's chapter title is 'If he greets a Christian without knowing him'. In the chapter before, 'How to pray for a dhimmi', Uqba b. Amir passes a man who looks like a Muslim; the man greets him and Uqba replies: "And on you, and the mercy of God and His blessings." His servant tells him the man is a Christian, so Uqba gets up and follows him until he catches up, and says: "The mercy of God and His blessings are for the believers, but may God lengthen your life and increase your wealth and your children" (al-Adab al-Mufrad 1112). These are the acts of two Companions, not words of the Prophet. Al-Albani grades both hasan (good) in his edition (p. 626).

Why this is a problem

A greeting of peace given and returned is taken back once the other man's religion is known. Ibn Umar goes back to demand it; Uqba chases a man down the road to tell him that God's mercy is not for him. Al-Bukhari arranges these as model conduct, with chapter titles that make them rules: how to pray for a dhimmi, and what to do if you greet a Christian by mistake.

The canonical rule already forbids greeting Jews and Christians first and tells Muslims to force them to the narrowest part of the road (Muslim 2167). These reports go a step further: even a greeting given in error must be recovered. Peace and mercy are treated as goods that belong to Muslims and must not leak to others.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the full Islamic greeting is a prayer for God's peace and mercy, and that such a prayer belongs to believers. The Companions did not insult or harm the Christians; Uqba, in the same breath, wished the man long life, wealth and children. That is courtesy toward non-Muslims within the limits of belief, not hostility.

Why it fails

Uqba's kind wish is real, and the entry includes it. But both reports are about correcting a moment of shared courtesy. Neither Christian did anything; one had greeted Uqba and the other had returned Ibn Umar's greeting. The only reason for going back is to make clear that the words of peace and mercy were not meant for them.

A prayer that is withdrawn once the hearer's religion is discovered teaches that the religion, not the person, decides whether he may be wished peace. Al-Bukhari's chapter headings turn two Companions' reflexes into guidance, graded good by al-Albani.

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Ibn Umar beat any of his family he found playing backgammon; A'isha threatened to evict tenants who kept a board Moral Problems Governance Basic al-Adab al-Mufrad 1273
"When he found any of his family playing backgammon, he beat him and broke it."

What the hadith says

Nafi' reports that whenever Abdullah b. Umar found a member of his household playing nard (backgammon), he beat him and broke the board (al-Adab al-Mufrad 1273). In the next report, A'isha heard that a household living as tenants in her house had a nard set, and sent word: "If you do not get it out, I will get you out of my house," and she condemned it (no. 1274). Al-Bukhari's chapter title is 'Discipline, and expelling those who play nard and the people of falsehood'. These are the acts of Companions, not words of the Prophet. Al-Albani grades the first sahih al-isnad (sound chain) and the second hasan al-isnad (good chain), both stopping at the Companion.

Why this is a problem

The ban on nard itself is canonical: Muslim 2260 compares playing it to dyeing one's hand in the flesh and blood of a pig. What these reports add is enforcement. Ibn Umar beats members of his own household for playing a board game, and A'isha threatens to evict a family from her house for owning one. Al-Bukhari's chapter turns both into guidance: discipline, and expel the players.

A game is treated as an offence serious enough for physical punishment within the family and eviction from one's home.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that games of chance like nard lead to gambling and to neglect of prayer, which is why the Prophet forbade it. A head of household has a duty to prevent what is forbidden in his home, and a landlord may set conditions on her tenants. Neither Companion went beyond their own household or property.

Why it fails

That is true as far as it goes, and this is a minor entry. But it confirms the point: the prohibition is accepted, and these Companions show what it means in practice, the rod for one's own family and the threat of eviction for others. Al-Bukhari's heading generalises it beyond the two cases to "the people of falsehood". The reports show a household and community policed for leisure, with chains al-Albani grades sound and good, and with the approval of the most famous hadith collector.

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'No old woman will enter Paradise': Muhammad's joke makes an old woman weep; they will be remade as virgins Paradise Women Prophetic Character Basic al-Shama'il al-Muhammadiyya 239
"O mother of so-and-so, no old woman enters Paradise. ... Tell her that she will not enter it as an old woman."

What the hadith says

Al-Hasan al-Basri, a Successor, says an old woman came to the Prophet and asked him to pray that God would admit her to Paradise. He said: "O mother of so-and-so, no old woman enters Paradise." She turned away weeping. He said: "Tell her that she will not enter it as an old woman. God says: We have produced them in a new creation, and made them virgins, loving, of equal age" (Q 56:35-37) (al-Shama'il al-Muhammadiyya 239). The chain stops at al-Hasan, who does not name a Companion (mursal). Sunnah.com shows Zubair Ali Za'i's grade, weak chain; on dorar.net, al-Arna'ut notes the narrator al-Mubarak b. Fadala concealed his sources, while al-Albani, who calls this chain weak and mursal, grades the story hasan in his abridgement of the Shama'il and includes it in al-Silsila al-Sahiha (2987) because of a supporting report.

Why this is a problem

The tradition presents this as an example of the Prophet's humour, and it ends with reassurance, so the entry does not call it cruelty. But the joke works by first telling an old woman, who has just asked him to pray for her salvation, that people like her do not get into Paradise, and letting her leave in tears before the explanation is sent after her.

The explanation is the more telling part. Her entry into Paradise is described as her being remade young and a virgin, "of equal age", in the words of a verse about the women of Paradise. Her reward is described entirely in terms of the body men value: youth and virginity.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that this is a well-known example of the Prophet's gentle humour, which never contained a falsehood: it is literally true that no one will be old in Paradise, and the woman was told at once that she would enter it young. The report is also mursal and graded weak by chain.

Why it fails

The response is largely right that the joke is told as a kindness, and the chain is weak, so this is a minor entry. Its interest lies in what the reassurance consists of. Of all the things that might console an old woman worried about salvation, the text chooses the promise that she will be made a virgin again, in the vocabulary the Quran uses for the women of Paradise. That says more about whose pleasure Paradise is imagined around than about her.

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'Honour your aunt the palm': made from Adam's clay, the only tree that is pollinated Science Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Abu Ya'la 455
"Honour your aunt the date-palm, for it was created from the clay from which Adam was created, and no tree other than it is pollinated."

What the hadith says

Ali b. Abi Talib is made to report this as the Prophet's saying in the Musnad of Abu Ya'la (455), through Masrur b. Sa'id al-Tamimi, al-Awza'i and 'Urwa b. Ruwaym. The same report goes on: "Feed your women who have given birth fresh dates, and if there are no fresh dates, then dried dates; no tree is more honoured by Allah than the tree under which Mary daughter of Imran alighted." The editor, Husayn Salim Asad, prints his verdict on the page: isnaduhu da'if (its chain is weak). On dorar, al-Albani calls it fabricated (mawdu', al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 263), Ibn al-Jawzi says it is not authentic (al-Mawdu'at 1/291), and al-Haythami notes that its chain contains Masrur b. Sa'id, who is weak (Majma' al-Zawa'id 5/42). None of the six canonical books carries it.

Why this is a problem

The report makes two claims about the natural world. The first is that the date-palm was made from the same clay as Adam, which is why it is the human race's "aunt": the word is a kinship figure, but the shared origin is stated as fact. The second is that no tree other than the palm is pollinated (yulqah). That reflects the farming the speaker knew, where Arabs pollinated palms by hand, not the plant world. Pollination is how flowering plants in general set fruit. A saying that singles out the palm as the only pollinated tree is wrong as a statement about trees.

The second half ties the palm to the Quran's Mary, who gave birth by the trunk of a palm tree and was fed its fresh dates (Q 19:23-25), and turns that scene into dietary advice for women after childbirth. The report shows how a Quranic image was expanded into a cosmology of sacred plants and then put in the Prophet's mouth with a full chain of narrators.

The Muslim response

Muslim scholars do not rely on it. Asad grades the chain weak, al-Albani and Ibn al-Jawzi call it fabricated or unauthentic, and Ibn 'Uthaymin said plainly that it is not sound (laysa bi-sahih; Fatawa Nur 'ala al-Darb 2/536, card on dorar). A fabricated report binds no one and says nothing about what the Prophet taught.

Why it fails

On the grading, the response is right, and this entry does not claim otherwise. The point is what the tradition preserved. Abu Ya'la, a major compiler of a musnad, recorded it with a full chain, and later critics had to classify it among the forgeries. The critics rejected it because of its chain. None of the verdicts cited here objects to its botany. It shows that a saying with a false claim about nature could be transmitted as prophetic teaching inside the hadith literature until a critic examined its narrators.

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Fast Ramadan, get a houri in a pearl tent with seventy beds and 70,000 maids, 'for every day he fasted' Paradise Women Basic Musnad Abu Ya'la 5273
"No servant fasts Ramadan but he is married to a wife from the houris in a tent of hollow pearl ... This is for every day he fasted of Ramadan, besides the good deeds he did."

What the hadith says

In the Musnad of Abu Ya'la (5273), Ibn Mas'ud says he heard the Prophet, when the new moon of Ramadan appeared, say that if people knew what Ramadan holds, his community would wish it lasted the whole year. Asked to explain, he says that Paradise is adorned for Ramadan from one year to the next. On its first day a wind from beneath the Throne rustles the leaves of Paradise, and the houris pray: "Lord, give us husbands from among Your servants in this month." Every man who fasts Ramadan is then married to a houri in a tent of hollow pearl, with Q 55:72 ("houris secluded in tents") quoted. Each of these women has seventy garments, seventy perfumes and seventy couches of red ruby, each couch with seventy mattresses, plus 70,000 maidservants and 70,000 manservants carrying gold dishes. Her husband is given the like. The chain runs through Jarir b. Ayyub. No verdict by the editor is printed on the page. On dorar, Ibn al-Jawzi (al-Mawdu'at 2/547) and al-Albani (Da'if al-Targhib 596) call it fabricated. Al-Haythami (Majma' 3/144) and Ibn Hajar (al-Matalib al-'Aliya 1/397) blame Jarir b. Ayyub, whom Ibn Hajar calls very weak and the only narrator who has it.

Why this is a problem

The reward is described almost entirely as a marriage and an estate. The houris themselves ask for husbands, and the faster's reward is a wife, a pearl tent, furniture by the seventy and servants by the tens of thousands. The closing line makes it a tariff: "this is for every day (bi-kulli yawm) he fasted of Ramadan, besides the good deeds he did." Read most naturally, the whole package is earned again for each day fasted. The text does not give a total, but the arithmetic is the reader's to do.

The report is not sexually explicit; it speaks of marriage, couches and servants. Its picture of fasting is still transactional: self-denial by day in this world is paid for with women and luxury in the next. The quoted verse shows that the image did not come from nowhere. The Quran itself promises "houris secluded in tents", and the report enlarges that promise.

The Muslim response

Muslims answer that the report is fabricated, as Ibn al-Jawzi and al-Albani state on dorar, and that the sound reports on Ramadan's merits say nothing of this kind. The critics name the culprit: Jarir b. Ayyub alone transmits it, and he is very weak.

Why it fails

That is correct, and the grading is not in dispute. What remains is that a compiler of Abu Ya'la's standing recorded it with a full chain. Ibn Hajar still listed it in his collection of additional reports, and al-Haythami had to comment on it, so it circulated far enough to need refuting. Its picture of paradise is also an enlargement of Quranic material, the houris in tents, rather than an invention from nothing. The forger, if Jarir was one, made an existing promise bigger.

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Hafsa spoils a visitor's finery: 'Sawda, the One-eyed has come out!' Women Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Basic Musnad Abu Ya'la 7160
"She said: I will spoil her finery for her ... Hafsa said to her: O Sawda, the One-eyed has come out! ... She said: Where shall I hide? She said: Go to the hut, a palm-frond hut of theirs in which they cooked. So she went and hid in it, and in it were filth and spider webs."

What the hadith says

The story is told by Razina, a freedwoman of the Prophet, through a chain of three women (her daughter Amat Allah, Amina, and 'Ulayla bt. al-Kumayt), in the Musnad of Abu Ya'la (7160). A woman the text calls Sawda al-Yamaniyya comes to visit Aisha while Hafsa bt. Umar is with her. Sawda is finely dressed in Yemeni cloth, with two lentil-sized dots of aloe and saffron at the corners of her eyes. Hafsa says to Aisha: "The Messenger of Allah will come, and this one is shining among us?" Aisha twice tells her, "Fear Allah, Hafsa." Hafsa says she will spoil Sawda's finery. Since Sawda is hard of hearing, Hafsa tells her, "The One-eyed has come out!" Terrified and shaking, Sawda hides in the cooking hut. The Prophet finds the two women laughing so hard that they cannot speak. He finds Sawda trembling and tells her three times, "He has not come out, but he will come out." Then he brings her out and brushes the dust and cobwebs off her. The page does not say who Sawda al-Yamaniyya was, and this entry does not assume she was the Prophet's wife Sawda bt. Zam'a. No verdict by the editor is printed. On dorar, al-Haythami says the chain contains "narrators I do not know" (Majma' al-Zawa'id 4/319).

Why this is a problem

The story's motive is plain: Hafsa does not want a well-dressed woman in the room when the Prophet arrives, so she sets out to "spoil her finery". The method is cruel. She exploits the woman's poor hearing to make her believe that the One-eyed figure of the end times has appeared, then sends her to hide among filth and spider webs. Aisha objects at first, but when the Prophet arrives both women are helpless with laughter.

The Prophet comforts the victim. In the text his only words to the two women who frightened her are a question, asked three times, about why they are laughing. His only teaching is to confirm the fear itself: the One-eyed has not come out, "but he will come out", said three times. A report about the Mothers of the Believers that a reader might expect to end in a rebuke ends with the terror affirmed and the prank left unremarked.

The Muslim response

Muslims would point to the weak chain: the chain after Razina runs through three women, and al-Haythami says it contains narrators he does not know. If the story is accepted at all, they would read it as ordinary rivalry between women in a household, which the Prophet calmed with kindness. No Muslim discussion of this particular report was found.

Why it fails

The chain is weak, and the entry does not claim more. Still, Abu Ya'la placed the story in his Musnad under Razina's name with no hint of disapproval. The hadith tradition was willing to preserve, as part of the Prophet's household history, a scene in which one of his wives terrorises a visitor who is hard of hearing, out of jealousy, another protests but then joins in the laughter, and the Prophet's recorded words only confirm that the figure Hafsa invoked will come. The story's value lies in what transmitters found plausible about that household, not in proving that it happened.

Check it yourself

Aisha: earthquakes come when people make zina lawful, drink wine and play instruments Science Moral Problems Moderate Ibn Abi al-Dunya, al-'Uqubat 17
"When they make fornication lawful, drink wine and play musical instruments, and Allah grows jealous in His heaven, He says to the earth: Quake with them. If they repent and desist, [well and good]; otherwise He brings it down on them."

What the hadith says

These are Aisha's own words, not a saying of the Prophet. In Ibn Abi al-Dunya's al-'Uqubat ("Punishments"), in the chapter on the causes and kinds of punishment (no. 17), Anas b. Malik and another man visit Aisha, and the man asks her about earthquakes. She gives the answer quoted above. Asked whether it is a punishment, she says: "Rather an admonition, a mercy and a blessing for the believers, and an exemplary punishment, a torment and wrath upon the unbelievers." Anas says he never heard a report after the Prophet that made him happier. The chain runs through Baqiyya b. al-Walid, Yazid b. 'Abd Allah al-Juhani and Abu al-'Ala'. No critic's verdict on this chain was found. For a longer version of the same story, dorar records al-Hakim calling it sound on Muslim's condition. Al-Dhahabi replied: "I reckon it was fabricated in Anas's name" (ahsabuhu mawdu'an 'ala Anas).

Why this is a problem

The explanation of earthquakes is entirely moral. Fornication, wine and musical instruments provoke divine jealousy, and Allah orders the earth to shake. Earthquakes follow fault lines and plate boundaries; they strike pious and impious regions alike and recur in the same places for geological reasons. A theory that ties them to a city's music has no way of explaining why devout places shake while many permissive ones do not.

The answer also cannot be tested. The same quake is mercy and blessing for believers and torment for unbelievers, so any outcome confirms it. Ibn Abi al-Dunya did not file this as a curiosity: he put it in a book on the causes of divine punishment, and the next report in the book (no. 18) has the Prophet and Umar treating quakes the same way.

The Muslim response

Muslim preachers do cite such reports after earthquakes to call people to repentance, and they would stress that these are Aisha's words, not revelation. Others point to al-Dhahabi's verdict on dorar that the story was probably fabricated in Anas's name. If so, it tells us nothing about Aisha's own view.

Why it fails

The two answers pull in opposite directions. If the report is fabricated, the only favourable verdict, al-Hakim's "sound on Muslim's condition", shows how a forgery could pass a major hadith master. If it is genuine, then Aisha, whom Muslims treat as one of the great teachers of the community, taught a moral theory of earthquakes that Anas welcomed with joy. Either way, a classical book on divine punishment preserved it as instruction. The idea survives in sermons after disasters, which shows it was never confined to one chain.

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He puts his hand on the quaking earth: 'Be still, your time has not yet come' Science Prophetic Character Strange / Obscure Basic Ibn Abi al-Dunya, al-'Uqubat 18
"He placed his hand on it and said: Be still, for your time has not yet come. Then he turned to his companions and said: Your Lord is asking you to make amends, so make amends to Him."

What the hadith says

In Ibn Abi al-Dunya's al-'Uqubat (no. 18), Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwan, a later Umayyad who names no Companion, relates that the earth quaked in the Prophet's time and that he put his hand on it and spoke the words quoted above. When it quaked again in Umar's time, Umar said: "O people, this quake came only because of something you introduced. By Him in whose hand is my soul, if it returns I will never live among you in it." The Umar part is also told separately (no. 20) through Nafi' from Safiyya, who says Medina quaked in Umar's time and he said: "How quickly you have introduced [innovations]! If it returns I will not live among you in it." On dorar, Ibn al-Qayyim quotes the Prophet's part and calls it mursal (al-Jawab al-Kafi 37): the narrator does not name the witness who saw it, and could not have seen it himself. No other verdict was found.

Why this is a problem

The Prophet puts his hand on the earth and speaks to it as if it could hear and obey. His explanation is twofold. The earth's "time has not yet come", which we read as meaning that the final quake of the end times is still ahead. Meanwhile this tremor is a message from Allah demanding that people make amends. On this view, a geological event is a divine reproach.

Umar draws the political conclusion. The quake is the people's fault, caused by "something you introduced", and he threatens to leave the city if it happens again. Both versions in the book treat earthquakes as a verdict on the community's conduct. Ibn Abi al-Dunya put them in a book whose subject is divine punishment.

The Muslim response

Muslims would answer that the Prophet's part is mursal and cannot be relied on, as Ibn al-Qayyim himself says on dorar. Its use, as in Ibn al-Qayyim's book, is moral: disasters are a reminder to turn back to Allah. That is a call to repentance, not a theory of geology.

Why it fails

The chain is broken, and the entry does not claim otherwise. What is notable is that Ibn al-Qayyim, knowing it was mursal, still cited it to teach that disasters call for repentance. The Umar part does not depend on the broken chain: no. 20 gives it through a different route, ending with Safiyya. The idea the response calls "moral, not geological" is presented in both reports as the cause of the quake: "this quake came only because of something you introduced". That is a claim about why the earth shook.

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Muslims who pray, fast and make Hajj turned into apes and pigs overnight for tambourines and singing-girls Eschatology Moral Problems Strange / Obscure Moderate Ibn Abi al-Dunya, Dhamm al-Malahi 8
"Do they not testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah? He said: Yes, and they fast, pray and make the Hajj. They said: Then what is wrong with them? He said: They took up instruments, tambourines and singing-girls, spent the night over their drink and their amusement, and in the morning they had been transformed into apes and pigs."

What the hadith says

In Ibn Abi al-Dunya's Dhamm al-Malahi ("Condemnation of Entertainments", no. 8), Abu Hurayra reports the Prophet as saying that "a people of this community will be transformed into apes and pigs at the end of time". The Companions ask whether these people do not bear witness to the faith, and the exchange quoted above follows. The chain runs through Hassan b. Abi Sinan "from a man" who is not named. On dorar, Ibn Hazm rejects it because "it contains a man not named, and no one knows who he is" (al-Muhalla 9/58). Al-Qurtubi lists the report as sound (al-Tadhkira 645, dorar). The core idea is canonical. In Bukhari 5590, people of the Prophet's community will make lawful illegal sex, silk, wine and musical instruments, and "others" will be transformed into monkeys and pigs until the Day of Resurrection. Bukhari introduces it with "Hisham b. 'Ammar said", without a full chain of his own to Hisham.

Why this is a problem

This version removes any doubt about who is punished. The victims are not unbelievers. They testify to the faith, fast, pray and make the Hajj, and they still wake up as apes and pigs. Their offence is instruments, tambourines and singing-girls, with an evening of drink. In this report the testimony of faith, prayer, fasting and the Hajj do not protect a Muslim from bodily metamorphosis if he takes up instruments, tambourines and singing-girls and spends the night over drink and amusement.

A mass transformation of human beings into animals is offered as a literal prophecy of the end times, and in Bukhari's version as one lasting "until the Day of Resurrection". The weak report is not an isolated oddity. It adds detail to a prophecy that sits inside Sahih al-Bukhari, and the anti-music literature has relied on the whole family of these reports.

The Muslim response

Muslims who permit music answer with Ibn Hazm, who rejected this report on dorar because of its unnamed narrator; he regarded the music reports in general as weak. Those who forbid music answer instead that the transformation describes people who make sins lawful, not believers who merely slip, and that it is a warning, not a timetable.

Why it fails

Ibn Hazm is right about this chain, but al-Qurtubi accepted the report, and the substance does not depend on it: Bukhari 5590, in the most respected Sunni collection, carries the metamorphosis into monkeys and pigs in the same prophecy that condemns those who make instruments lawful. The "making lawful" defence fits Bukhari's wording but not this one. Here the Prophet is asked directly what is wrong with these people. He answers that they took up instruments and spent the night drinking and amusing themselves, not that they denied a ruling, and he affirms that they pray, fast and make the Hajj.

Check it yourself

Seventy wives on one bed, and 'he completes intercourse with them in the space of one night' Paradise Sexual Issues Women Moderate Ibn Abi al-Dunya, Sifat al-Janna 7
"On the bed are seventy mattresses, on them seventy wives, on each wife seventy garments, the marrow of her shin seen beneath the ornaments; he completes intercourse with them in the space of one night."

What the hadith says

In Ibn Abi al-Dunya's Sifat al-Janna ("Description of Paradise", no. 7 in al-'Asasila's edition; dorar numbers it 6), Ali asks the Prophet about Q 19:85, "the Day We will gather the righteous to the Most Merciful as a delegation". The righteous leave their graves on winged white she-camels with golden saddles and ride to the gate of Paradise. When they knock, every houri learns that her husband has come. She sends her steward to open the gate, then rushes out of her tent, embraces him and says: "You are my love and I am your love." He enters a house a hundred thousand cubits high and comes to a couch with a bed on it, and there finds the scene quoted above. Rivers of water, honey, wine and milk run beneath them, white birds come to be eaten, and the branches bend down with fruit. The chain runs from al-Dahhak b. Muzahim through al-Harith to Ali. On dorar, al-Albani grades it very weak (da'if jiddan, Da'if al-Targhib 2181). Ibn al-Qayyim calls it gharib and says its attribution to the Prophet is doubtful, the known version being Ali's own words (Hadi al-Arwah 135, dorar).

Why this is a problem

Paradise is described here as a man's sexual reward. He has seventy wives on one bed, each so translucent that the marrow of her shin shows through her clothes and ornaments, and he "completes intercourse with them" (yaqdi jima'ahunna) in the measure of a single night. The houri's whole role is to wait, hurry out, embrace and declare her love. The women are part of the furnishings, listed between the house and the rivers.

The canonical tradition has the same picture on a smaller scale. In Tirmidhi 2522, each man among the first to enter Paradise has two wives, each wearing seventy garments, with the marrow of her shins visible through them. The weak report did not invent the translucent wife. It multiplied her and added the night of intercourse.

The Muslim response

Muslims dismiss this report as very weak, following al-Albani on dorar. They rely instead on the sound reports, which speak of two wives, and they treat numbers like these as storytellers' inflation that does not bind belief.

Why it fails

The grading is right. But the sound report the response falls back on keeps the same image of the wives, whose shin marrow shows through seventy garments, so the objection is to the degree, not the kind. The weak version was not preserved by an obscure storyteller. It sits in a hadith scholar's book devoted to describing Paradise, presented as the Prophet's own commentary on a Quranic verse, although Ibn al-Qayyim thought it better known as Ali's own words. It shows how readily the tradition expanded the sexual reward when the chain allowed it.

Check it yourself

At Badr a man rises from the ground and is clubbed back down, again and again: 'That is Abu Jahl' Hell Disbelievers Strange / Obscure Basic Ibn Abi al-Dunya, al-Qubur 92
"I passed by Badr and saw a man coming out of the ground, and a man strikes him with a club he has until he disappears into the ground; then he comes out and the same is done to him, many times. The Messenger of Allah said: That is Abu Jahl b. Hisham, being punished until the Day of Resurrection."

What the hadith says

Ibn Abi al-Dunya's al-Qubur ("The Graves", no. 92) gives this report from his father, through Hushaym and Mujalid, from al-Sha'bi. Al-Sha'bi was a Successor and names no Companion, so the report is mursal: the link to the Prophet is missing. In it a man tells the Prophet that, passing Badr, he saw a man rise out of the ground and another beat him back down with a club (miqma'a), again and again. The Prophet identifies the victim as Abu Jahl, the Meccan leader killed at Badr, "being punished until the Day of Resurrection". No critic's grading of this report was found. A similar story is told from Ibn Umar in al-Tabarani's al-Mu'jam al-Awsat: at Badr a chained man comes out of a pit and begs for water, another man whips him back in, and the Prophet says, "That is the enemy of Allah, Abu Jahl b. Hisham, and that is his punishment until the Day of Resurrection." Al-Haythami says its chain contains 'Abd Allah b. Muhammad b. al-Mughira, who is weak (Majma' al-Zawa'id 3/60, dorar).

Why this is a problem

The report makes the punishment of the grave something a passer-by can watch. Abu Jahl's corpse, or his likeness, comes up out of the earth at the battlefield and is clubbed back into it in an endless cycle, and the Prophet names the victim without having seen him. The punishment of the dead stops being an unseen doctrine and becomes a spectacle at a named place.

In this collection, the only witness is an unnamed man, the only narrator a Successor who was not there, and the scene is preserved in a book whose purpose is to teach about graves through stories like this one. It is a good example of how vivid afterlife material entered the literature attached to the Prophet's name by a chain that stops a generation short.

The Muslim response

Muslims would treat it as an unsupported mursal report. It illustrates the punishment of the grave, which they accept on other grounds, but it is not itself evidence for anything. No Muslim discussion of this particular text was found.

Why it fails

That is a fair reading of the chain, and this entry claims no more. The point is what a classical hadith author chose to teach under the heading of graves. Ibn Abi al-Dunya placed this report among others about the dead without warning the reader that it is mursal, and no critic's grading of this chain was found. Material like this shaped popular belief about the grave without passing through the critics who might have rejected it.

Check it yourself

Ibn Umar sees a man rise burning from his grave, chained, begging for water, and dragged back in Hell Strange / Obscure Basic Ibn Abi al-Dunya, al-Qubur 93
"A man came out of his grave blazing with fire, a chain on his neck which he dragged, and said: O Abd Allah, sprinkle [water]! O Abd Allah, sprinkle! ... And another came out and said: O Abd Allah, do not sprinkle! Do not sprinkle! Then he pulled the chain and returned him to his grave."

What the hadith says

This is a Companion's account of his own experience, not a saying of the Prophet. In Ibn Abi al-Dunya's al-Qubur (no. 93), Salim b. 'Abd Allah reports that his father, Ibn Umar, said that he was riding between Mecca and Medina with a water-skin behind him when he passed a graveyard and saw the scene quoted above. Ibn Umar adds: "By Allah, I do not know whether he knew me by my name or called me as people call [anyone]" ("Abd Allah", servant of Allah, is both his name and a common address). The chain runs from Hammad b. Salama through 'Amr b. Dinar, steward of the family of al-Zubayr. The same book tells the story of an unnamed rider from 'Urwa (no. 95): the man rises "shackled in iron", the rider faints, wakes with his hair turned white, and Uthman then forbids men to travel alone. No critic's grading of either report was found.

Why this is a problem

The torment of the grave is again made visible. A dead man rises in flames, chained at the neck, and begs a passing traveller for water. A second figure, evidently his tormentor, forbids it, hauls on the chain and drags him back underground. The episode is given on the authority of one of the most respected Companions, Ibn Umar, son of the caliph Umar.

The variant shows how such a story could change in the telling. In no. 95 the witness has no name, the chain becomes iron shackles, and the story ends with the rider's hair turning white overnight and a caliph's travel ban. One tale, two tellers, and a legal consequence attached.

The Muslim response

Muslims would say this is an anecdote, not a hadith: Ibn Umar's report of what he saw, or thought he saw, on a journey, which binds no one. Such stories are told in preaching on the punishment of the grave. No critical Muslim discussion of this text was found.

Why it fails

That is right, and the entry presents it as Ibn Umar's story, not the Prophet's. But the response concedes the point at issue. A classical hadith scholar collected this as instruction about the grave, with a chain to a leading Companion, beside a variant that ends with a caliph's ruling. No critic's grading of these stories was found. What the book transmits is popular belief about the grave, attached to respected names.

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A brother opens his sister's grave and finds it ablaze: she delayed prayer and eavesdropped at neighbours' doors Hell Women Strange / Obscure Basic Ibn Abi al-Dunya, al-Qubur 97
"He lifted some of the bricks over the niche, and the grave was blazing with fire ... She said: She used to delay the prayer, and did not pray, I think, with ablution, and she would go to the neighbours' doors when they slept, put her ear to their doors and bring out their talk."

What the hadith says

This is a story, not a hadith: the Prophet and the Companions play no part in it. In Ibn Abi al-Dunya's al-Qubur (no. 97), 'Amr b. Dinar tells of a man of Medina who visited his sick sister until she died, then buried her. Back home, he remembered that he had left a purse in the grave, so he went back with a friend, dug the grave open and found the purse. He told his friend to stand aside so that he could see how his sister was. When he lifted some of the bricks over the burial niche, the grave was blazing with fire, so he closed it and went to his mother. She told him what her daughter had been like, in the words quoted above. The chain is Suwayd b. Sa'id from al-Hakam b. Sinan from 'Amr b. Dinar. The entry relies on this one page, and no grading was found.

Why this is a problem

The sins that set a grave on fire are ordinary ones: praying late, perhaps without ablution (the mother herself only says "I think"), and listening at neighbours' doors and repeating what she heard. Part of the charge rests on her mother's guess, and the story offers the burning grave as proof.

The story is not presented as a fable. It sits in a classical book on graves among reports from the Prophet and the Companions, and it is the kind of tale that gives sermons on the punishment of the grave their force. Its message is that the grave can be opened and the torment seen, and that a woman's everyday faults are enough to fill it with fire.

The Muslim response

Muslims would say this is a storyteller's anecdote, not revelation, told to warn people about neglecting prayer and spreading gossip. Nobody is obliged to believe it happened. No Muslim critique of the story was found.

Why it fails

That is right, and the entry presents it only as what a classic book on graves teaches. But that is the point. Ibn Abi al-Dunya was a hadith scholar, not a street preacher, and he put this story into a book of instruction without any warning. Popular belief about the grave was shaped by material that, as the response concedes, has no authority, yet it was transmitted beside reports that do.

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Married off before she was born, for a slaughtered sheep: Ibn Mas'ud upholds the marriage Child Marriage Women Moral Problems Moderate Sunan Sa'id b. Mansur 636
"Whichever of you slaughters a sheep for us, I will marry him to the first daughter born to me ... Ibn Mas'ud said: The marriage is binding through the sheep, and she has the dowry of her peers, no less and no more."

What the hadith says

This is a Companion's ruling, not the Prophet's. In the Sunan of Sa'id b. Mansur, in the chapter "Marrying off the young girl" (636), al-Sha'bi relates that a man on a journey offered the bargain quoted above. One of his companions slaughtered a sheep. Later a daughter was born to the man, and the companion came and said: "My wife!" They took the case to Ibn Mas'ud, who gave the ruling quoted above. No. 637 gives the same through Ibrahim al-Nakha'i. In another version from Ibrahim (638), Ibn Mas'ud says: "You have acquired the woman, and this is not a dowry." The chains reach Ibn Mas'ud through al-Sha'bi and Ibrahim; whether they heard it from him was not checked. The entry relies on these pages, and no grading by any critic was found.

Why this is a problem

A girl who did not yet exist was promised in marriage as payment for a meal. When she was born, the man who had slaughtered the sheep claimed her as "my wife", and Ibn Mas'ud, a senior Companion, agreed. The marriage stood. His only correction was financial: the sheep could not serve as the dowry, so she was owed the standard dowry of women like her.

The report records no question about the girl's consent, and she could not have given it. Her father's word, given on a journey, bound her before her birth. The chapter heading, "Marrying off the young girl", shows that Sa'id b. Mansur treated the case as law on the marriage of minors. The text says nothing about her age at consummation, and this entry adds nothing. The marriage itself was declared binding at birth.

The Muslim response

Muslim jurists discuss contracts like this under the guardian's power to marry off a minor (ijbar). They would say that Ibn Mas'ud's ruling protects the girl, since he refuses to let a sheep count as her dowry and insists on her full fair dowry. No specific Muslim response to this report was found.

Why it fails

The dowry is the only protection the ruling gives, and it is paid to a marriage the girl never chose. The response treats her as protected because she is owed money, while the decision about whose wife she is was made before she existed and upheld by a Companion whose rulings Sunni jurists cite as a source of law. The chapter's own heading shows it was transmitted as precedent, not as an embarrassing anecdote.

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A newborn girl 'given' to a man: Sa'id b. al-Musayyab says a whip as dowry would make her lawful Child Marriage Women Prophetic Privileges Moderate Sunan Sa'id b. Mansur 640
"Giving [a woman] as a gift is lawful to no one after the Messenger of Allah; and if he had given her a whip as dowry, she would be lawful to him."

What the hadith says

This is a Successor's legal opinion, not a hadith. In the same chapter of Sa'id b. Mansur's Sunan, "Marrying off the young girl" (640), Ibn Qusayt relates that a man was told a baby girl had been born to him. Another man said, "Give her to me," and the father said, "She is yours." Sa'id b. al-Musayyab, a leading Successor of Medina, was asked about it and gave the answer quoted above. The chain runs through Sufyan and Ayyub b. Musa. The entry relies on this one page, and no grading was found.

Why this is a problem

The case is a newborn girl handed over to a man in a single sentence. The jurist's objection has nothing to do with her being a baby. He objects only that she was given without a dowry. A woman "given as a gift" is a privilege reserved to the Prophet (Q 33:50 allows him a believing woman who gives herself to him, "only for you, excluding the [other] believers"). For anyone else, any dowry at all would do: "if he had given her a whip as dowry, she would be lawful to him."

A whip as the price of a newborn daughter is the jurist's own example of the minimum. The ruling shows a legal mind for which the validity of the marriage turns on a token payment, not on the girl's age, consent or interests. The text does not say when or whether the marriage was consummated, and this entry adds nothing on that.

The Muslim response

Classical jurists explain that any agreed dowry, however small, validates a marriage, and that Sa'id b. al-Musayyab's point was to deny ordinary men the Prophet's special privilege of marriage by gift. On that reading he is upholding the girl's right to a dowry. No specific response to this report was found.

Why it fails

That is what he says, and it is the problem. His ruling protects the form of the contract, the dowry, and treats the substance as unremarkable: a newborn transferred to a man at her father's word. The scale of the minimum he names, a whip, shows how little the girl's side of the exchange counted. Sa'id b. al-Musayyab was a leading Successor of Medina, and Sa'id b. Mansur filed his opinion as law on marrying off young girls.

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Ibn Umar: 'One raid in the path of Allah is better than fifty pilgrimages' Warfare & Jihad Ritual Absurdities Basic Sunan Sa'id b. Mansur 2346
"A raid in the path of Allah is better than fifty pilgrimages."

What the hadith says

These are Ibn Umar's own words, not a saying of the Prophet. In the Sunan of Sa'id b. Mansur, in the chapter "On raiding after the Hajj" (2346), Adam b. 'Ali says he heard Ibn Umar say the sentence quoted above. The chain is Abu al-Ahwas from Adam b. 'Ali. The word used is ghazwa, a military expedition; the text does not say whether it is offensive or defensive. On dorar, Ibn al-Nahhas cites the saying from Ibn Umar through Adam b. 'Ali with "journey" (safra) in place of "raid", and dorar records his verdict as [isnaduhu sahih] (its chain is sound; Mashari' al-Ashwaq 204).

Why this is a problem

Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. Here a senior Companion, the son of the caliph Umar, ranks a single military expedition above fifty of them. Whatever the conditions, the scale is the point: in the value system this saying expresses, fighting "in the path of Allah" outweighs a lifetime of pilgrimage many times over.

Sa'id b. Mansur did not record this as an aside. He filed it under the chapter heading "On raiding after the Hajj". The opinion was transmitted as guidance on how a Muslim should rank his religious duties.

The Muslim response

Muslims would read it as ranking jihad above voluntary pilgrimages for someone who has already performed the obligatory Hajj. The chapter itself is about raiding after the Hajj. It is also a Companion's personal view, not a command from the Prophet. No specific source for this answer was found.

Why it fails

The chapter heading supports that reading, and the entry does not claim Ibn Umar devalued the obligatory Hajj. But the comparison still sets one military expedition against fifty acts of worship that Muslims count among the highest. Ibn Umar was a senior Companion, and his view was preserved by a major early compiler as guidance on what to do after the pilgrimage: go raiding.

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Three hundred on Adam's heart, one on Israfil's: saints 'through whom He gives life and death' Strange / Obscure Allah's Character Moderate Abu Nu'aym, Hilyat al-Awliya 1/9
"Allah has in creation three hundred whose hearts are on the heart of Adam ... and Allah has in creation one whose heart is on the heart of Israfil ... Through them He gives life and causes death, sends rain, makes things grow and wards off affliction."

What the hadith says

In the introduction to Abu Nu'aym's Hilyat al-Awliya' ("The Ornament of the Saints"), Ibn Mas'ud is made to report the Prophet as describing a hierarchy. Allah has three hundred people whose hearts are on the heart of Adam, forty on Moses', seven on Abraham's, five on Gabriel's, three on Michael's and one on Israfil's. When one dies he is replaced from the rank below, and the three hundred are replenished from the common people (1/8-9). Asked how life and death come "through them", Ibn Mas'ud explains that they ask Allah to multiply the nations, pray against tyrants so that they are broken, and pray for rain and crops, and their prayers are answered. Just before it, on the same page, Abu Nu'aym gives an Ibn Umar report: "The best of my community in every generation are five hundred, and the abdal are forty." He introduces this section by saying that through the saints' sincerity "rain falls and victory is given". On dorar, al-Albani calls the Ibn Mas'ud report fabricated (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 1479), Ibn Taymiyya calls it a lie (Majmu' al-Fatawa 11/167) and al-Dhahabi calls it fabricated (Mizan 3/50). Al-Albani also calls the Ibn Umar report fabricated (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 935, dorar).

Why this is a problem

The report sets out an order of saints, graded by the hearts of prophets and archangels, with a single man at the top whose heart is on Israfil's. The world's life and death, rain, harvests and protection from disaster are said to come "through them". The text itself explains this as the power of their prayers, not that they create anything. Even so, it makes the welfare of the world depend on a self-replacing elite whom the text does not name.

This is not a fringe pamphlet. Abu Nu'aym includes this hierarchy in the introduction to one of the great classical collections on the lives of the pious, and his own framing endorses it: through the saints' sincerity, rain falls and victory is given. Later critics such as Ibn Taymiyya called the report a lie, but before them a classical Sunni work had recorded, in hadith form, the belief that the world is kept going by such men.

The Muslim response

Sunni critics reject the report outright. Ibn Taymiyya calls it a lie, and al-Albani and al-Dhahabi call it fabricated (dorar). Muslims add that the text itself explains the saints' role as answered prayer, which Islam affirms of righteous people generally, and that Sufi ideas of the abdal are not binding doctrine.

Why it fails

The verdicts are right, and the entry does not claim the report is sound. But the rejection came from later critics. Abu Nu'aym, himself a hadith master, transmitted it with a full chain and placed it in his introduction. The "answered prayer" reading also does not reduce it to ordinary piety. Ordinary righteous people do not form a fixed hierarchy of 300, 40, 7, 5, 3 and 1, each rank matched to a prophet or archangel, through whom Allah "gives life and causes death". That is a cosmology, and a major Sunni hagiography made it part of the tradition.

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Half-blind at 84, Sa'id b. al-Musayyab: 'Nothing frightens me more than women' Women Basic Abu Nu'aym, Hilyat al-Awliya 2/166
"Satan never despaired of anything but he came at it through women. ... [Told when he was eighty-four, one eye gone and the other failing:] Nothing is more frightening to me than women."

What the hadith says

These are the words of Sa'id b. al-Musayyab, a leading Successor of Medina, not of the Prophet. In Abu Nu'aym's Hilyat al-Awliya' (2/166), in the section on Sa'id, three reports through 'Ali b. Zayd record his view. In the first two he says: "I have reached eighty years, and nothing is more frightening to me than women"; the second adds that his sight had gone. In the third, through Sufyan b. 'Uyayna, he says: "Satan never despaired of anything but he came at it through women." The narrator adds that Sa'id told them, at eighty-four, with one eye gone and night-blind in the other: "Nothing is more frightening to me than women." The entry relies on this page, and no grading was found. The canonical tradition already has the core idea: in Bukhari 5096, the Prophet says, "I have not left after me any trial more harmful to men than women."

Why this is a problem

The saying turns women into the danger itself. Sa'id does not say that he fears his own desire. He says that nothing frightens him more than women, and that Satan, when he has failed everywhere else, comes through them. That is still his view at eighty-four, half blind, after a lifetime of piety.

Abu Nu'aym preserved this as part of a saint's biography, an example of pious vigilance. The lesson for the reader is that a holy man's guard against women never relaxes, because women are Satan's last route. It builds on the canonical saying that women are the most harmful trial for men and makes it a personal creed.

The Muslim response

Muslims present it as piety, not misogyny: even a great scholar in old age does not trust himself and guards against temptation, which is what the Bukhari hadith warns about. The trial lies in men's desire, and the saying is about self-discipline. No source for this response was found.

Why it fails

That is the charitable reading, but it is not what Sa'id says. His words name women, not desire, as the thing he fears, and as Satan's instrument. The same framing appears in Bukhari 5096, where women themselves are the "trial" left for men. The responsibility is placed on half of humanity for the temptation of the other half. Sa'id's saying preserves that view in the words of a leading Successor, and the hagiography presents it as wisdom.

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'Wisdom was divided into ten parts: Ali got nine, all other people one' Strange / Obscure Governance Basic Abu Nu'aym, Hilyat al-Awliya 1/65
"Wisdom was divided into ten parts; Ali was given nine parts, and the people one part."

What the hadith says

In the section on Ali in Abu Nu'aym's Hilyat al-Awliya' (1/65), Ibn Mas'ud is made to say: "I was with the Prophet when he was asked about Ali, and he said" the words quoted above. The chain runs through Sufyan al-Thawri, Mansur, Ibrahim and 'Alqama. The print's word is al-hukm (judgement, wisdom); the cards on dorar read al-hikma (wisdom). On dorar, Ibn al-Jawzi says it is not authentic (la yasihh, al-'Ilal al-Mutanahiya 1/241). Al-Dhahabi says: "May Allah curse whoever forged it" (Talkhis al-'Ilal al-Mutanahiya 81).

Why this is a problem

The saying gives one Companion nine-tenths of all wisdom and leaves the rest of humanity, prophets' followers and all, to share the remaining tenth. It is partisan doctrine in the Prophet's mouth. If true, it would give Ali's party a strong argument in the succession quarrel.

In the Sunni tradition, such sayings are usually treated as a Shi'i problem, but this one sits in a Sunni hagiography with a chain of famous Kufan scholars, among other reports in praise of Ali. Rival parties fought the succession dispute partly by circulating sayings of the Prophet. The tenths formula shows the method: a precise, quotable ratio that no real conversation is likely to have produced.

The Muslim response

Sunni critics brand it a forgery. Ibn al-Jawzi rejects it, and al-Dhahabi curses its forger (dorar). Muslims hold Ali in high regard on the basis of sound reports. A fabricated report proves only that someone fabricated it, not that the Prophet said it.

Why it fails

On the grading, the response is right. The entry's point is what the forgery reveals. Someone put a sectarian ratio into the Prophet's mouth with a chain of famous names such as Sufyan al-Thawri, and the result was good enough to be copied into a major Sunni work on the saints. Al-Dhahabi's curse shows that the critics recognised the danger. Abu Nu'aym's book shows that, before they examined such material, it travelled as prophetic praise.

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'Follow the imams after me, for they are my family, created from my clay' Governance Strange / Obscure Basic Abu Nu'aym, Hilyat al-Awliya 1/86
"Let him follow the imams after me, for they are my family, created from my clay, granted understanding and knowledge. Woe to those of my community who deny their merit and cut my tie with them; may Allah not grant them my intercession."

What the hadith says

In Abu Nu'aym's Hilyat al-Awliya' (1/86), Ibn 'Abbas is made to report the Prophet as saying: "Whoever would like to live my life, die my death and dwell in the Garden of Eden that my Lord planted, let him take Ali as his patron after me, take his patron as patron," and follow the imams, as quoted above. The chain runs through 'Ikrima, Isma'il b. Umayya, Ibn Abi Rawwad and Ya'qub b. Musa al-Hashimi. On the same page, Abu Nu'aym gives a similar report from Hudhayfa ("let him take Ali b. Abi Talib as patron after me") and notes that Ibn 'Abbas also narrates it, "and it is gharib" (singular, poorly attested). He then adds his own gloss: those who truly hold to the Prophet's family are the dry-lipped ascetics. On dorar, al-Albani calls the Ibn 'Abbas report fabricated (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa 894). Muqbil al-Wadi'i says: "its chain is dark and its text fabricated" (al-Shafa'a 301).

Why this is a problem

The saying teaches a doctrine of imams: a line of leaders after the Prophet, drawn from his family, made from his own clay, gifted with special understanding and knowledge, whom believers are told to follow, while those who deny their merit and cut the Prophet's tie with them are denied his intercession. That is close to the Shi'i doctrine of the imamate, and it ties the Prophet's intercession to how one treats these imams.

It is preserved not in a Shi'i work but in a classical Sunni collection on the saints, with a full chain. Abu Nu'aym does not reject it. He notes that it is gharib and then reinterprets loyalty to the family as Sunni piety. The episode shows how fluid the tradition was: material that later Sunnis would call sectarian forgery was copied, glossed and passed on by their own scholars.

The Muslim response

Sunni critics reject it as forged, as al-Albani and al-Wadi'i do on dorar, and Abu Nu'aym himself flags the Ibn 'Abbas version as gharib. Sunni Islam honours the Prophet's family without any doctrine of imams created from his clay, so the report teaches Sunnis nothing they are bound to believe.

Why it fails

The grading is not in dispute, and the entry does not present this as Sunni doctrine. Its significance is historical. A saying that orders believers to follow a line of family imams, and denies the Prophet's intercession to those who deny their merit, passed into a major Sunni work with a full chain. The compiler did not call it false. He only noted that it was poorly attested and gave it a Sunni gloss. The boundary between "their" forgeries and "our" tradition was drawn later, by critics working through books like this one.

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Iblis's great-grandson Hama meets Muhammad: he was with Noah, Abraham in the fire and Joseph in the well Strange / Obscure Magic & Occult Prophetic Character Moderate Ibn Abi al-Dunya, al-Hawatif 101
"I am Hama b. al-Haym b. Laqis b. Iblis. He said: I see only two fathers between you and him. ... I was with Abraham, the Friend of the Merciful, when he was thrown into the fire."

What the hadith says

In Ibn Abi al-Dunya's al-Hawatif ("Voices from the Unseen", no. 101), Anas b. Malik says he was with the Prophet outside the mountains of Mecca when an old man leaning on a staff approached. The Prophet said: "The gait and the tone of a jinni." The old man introduced himself as Hama b. al-Haym b. Laqis b. Iblis. He said he had eaten up almost the whole age of the world: he was a boy before Cain and Abel, ordering food to be spoiled and sowing discord among people. He repented at Noah's hand, rebuked Noah, Hud, Salih and Shu'ayb for cursing their peoples, stood between Abraham and the catapult when Abraham was thrown into the fire, went with Joseph into the well and the prison, met Moses, and brought Jesus's greeting. Moses had taught him the Torah and Jesus the Gospel, and he asked to be taught the Qur'an, which the Prophet did. The narrator ends: "I think he is still alive." The chain runs through Malik b. Dinar and Abu Salama Muhammad b. 'Abd Allah al-Ansari. On dorar, Ibn al-Qayyim calls it fabricated (al-Manar al-Munif 68), and al-Dhahabi says it comes by two chains, both false (Mizan 3/599). Al-Suyuti dissents: weak, not fabricated (al-Nukat 'ala al-Mawdu'at 254).

Why this is a problem

The Prophet recognises a jinni by his walk, accepts his genealogy ("I see only two fathers between you and him") and teaches the Qur'an to Satan's great-grandson. The jinni's story weaves him into the whole of sacred history: present before the first murder, a convert of Noah's, a critic of four prophets for cursing their peoples, a companion in Abraham's fire and Joseph's well, a pupil of Moses and Jesus. Four prophets weep and repent at the rebuke of a jinni.

The story was not left to storytellers. A classical hadith author transmitted it with a chain to Anas, it was copied by later compilers, and one major critic, al-Suyuti, was unwilling to call it a forgery. It shows how far the hadith format could carry folklore into the life of the Prophet.

The Muslim response

Most Muslim critics reject it as a forgery: Ibn al-Qayyim lists it among fabricated reports, and al-Dhahabi calls both its chains false (dorar). The jinn exist in Islamic belief, but this tale has no sound basis and tells Muslims nothing about the Prophet.

Why it fails

Most critics agree, and the entry does not say otherwise. But the late hadith scholar al-Suyuti classed it as weak rather than fabricated. In practice that kept it eligible for transmission. A report in which the Prophet confirms that Satan has great-grandchildren who outlive the prophets was judged by a leading critic to fall short only on the strength of its chain. The tale's content did not disqualify it in his eyes.

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Fudayl b. 'Iyad: 'Singing is the incantation of fornication' Moral Problems Basic Ibn Abi al-Dunya, Dhamm al-Malahi 55
"Singing is the incantation of fornication."

What the hadith says

This is a maxim, not a hadith. In Ibn Abi al-Dunya's Dhamm al-Malahi ("Condemnation of Entertainments", no. 55), al-Husayn b. 'Abd al-Rahman reports that the ascetic Fudayl b. 'Iyad (d. AD 803) said: "Singing is the incantation (ruqya) of fornication." Fudayl lived two generations after the Companions, and nothing on the page attributes the words to the Prophet. When the phrase has been passed off as a hadith, Mulla 'Ali al-Qari noted that "it is said to have no basis" (al-Asrar al-Marfu'a 251, dorar). The entry relies on this one page for the attribution to Fudayl.

Why this is a problem

The maxim condemns all singing by its supposed effect: singing works on the soul like a spell and leads to fornication. It draws no line between a lullaby, a work song and a love song. Its force comes from the image, not from an argument, and that is what made it useful.

It became a slogan in the literature against music. Ibn Abi al-Dunya collected it among reports from the Prophet and the Companions in a book whose title condemns entertainment. Over time the phrase was attached to the Prophet himself, which is why a later scholar had to warn that, as a hadith, it has no basis. The maxim shows how an ascetic's rhetoric could drift into the prophetic tradition and into arguments about what is forbidden.

The Muslim response

Scholars who forbid music quote Fudayl as wisdom, not revelation. They base the prohibition on other texts, and they agree with al-Qari (dorar) that the phrase is not the Prophet's. A pious man's saying binds no one.

Why it fails

That is correct, and the entry presents it only as Fudayl's maxim. The point is how it was used. A rhetorical line from an ascetic was preserved beside hadith in a classical anti-music collection, and at times circulated as the Prophet's own words. The critics' need to deny that it is a hadith shows how far it had travelled. It also shows that part of the case against music drew on the moral intuitions of early ascetics, presented with the authority of the tradition.

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