Someone said to him, "When you come to my tent, stand up and report what you heard from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ."He said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, 'Recite the Quran, but do not go to excess in it, do not turn away from it, do not earn your food by it, and do not seek to amass wealth through it.'"
حدثنا عفان حدثنا موسى بن خلف أبو خلف وكان يعد من البدلاء وذكر حديثا آخر نحوه
Its chain is sahih. Musa bin Khalaf Ammi is trustworthy, and Ahmad here raises his praise of him to a very high degree, even calling him a "badal," and the "badal" is a great religious rank, just as the ranks of Siddiq and Farooq exist among the people of the sunnah and the community and the people of understanding among the people of hadith, not among the fanatics. Many advocates of Salafi thought reject these designations for no reason except that they are Sufi usages. Yet here is the imam, the true sheikh of Salafism and the undisputed imam of the people of hadith, declaring of a man from the people of hadith that he was one of the "abdal," the abdal that the Prophet ﷺ spoke of, "The abdal are in Sham." This is a hadith about which Haythami said in 10/62, "Its narrators are the narrators of the Sahih except for Shurayh bin Ubayd, who is trustworthy. He heard from Miqdad, who died before Ali." And he said about the hadith "The abdal of this nation are thirty," as will come later in the Musnad of Ubada bin Samit, "The narrators of Ahmad are the narrators of the Sahih, except for Abdul-Wahid bin Qays, whom Ajli and Abu Zura considered trustworthy while others considered him daif." These two hadiths are sufficient to establish the existence of the abdal in this nation. Likewise, Haythami is in agreement with Iraqi and Zubaydi, both of whom lean toward grading the hadiths of the abdal as hasan. See Ithaf 8/385 to 388, where he spoke good words and cited very many wordings and passed judgment on them.Some who claim knowledge have graded it daif, not on the basis of the principles of hadith science but out of following personal inclination and obstinate insistence on falsehood. I do not know why Sheikh Ahmad Shakir graded it daif in 896, claiming a break in the chain, while the imams affirm the possibility that they could have heard from one another. We will have another comment on its chain when we reach Ubada bin Samit as well, since the hadith will come up there and we have not yet addressed it. What I mean to say is this, that in judging a hadith we must free ourselves from partisanship and the following of personal inclinations.