Ahmad 1715

Its chain is daif due to a break in the transmission. Abbad bin Abdullah bin Zubayr is trustworthy, as we said at 707, but he did not witness the story of the compilation of the Quran. In fact, I do not think he ever met Harith bin Khuzayma. And even if he had met him, that would not make the hadith sahih, since he did not narrate it from him directly, but rather related the account with a broken chain, without any connecting link.The hadith was narrated by Ibn Abu Dawud in Kitab Masahif, no. 30, from Muhammad bin Yahya, from Harun bin Maruf, from Muhammad bin Salama. It also appears in Zawaid 7:35, where it is said, Ahmad narrated it, and it contains Ibn Ishaq, who is a mudallis, while the rest of its narrators are trustworthy! Hafiz Haythami failed to notice that its defect lies in its being a disconnected report. It also appears in Tafsir Ibn Kathir 4:277, citing the Musnad, without any comment on its defect.Ibn Athir said in Usd al-Ghaba, in the biography of this Harith, Ibn Manda mentioned that Harith bin Khuzayma is the one who came to Umar bin Khattab with the two verses that conclude Surah Baraah, "There has certainly come to you a Messenger from among yourselves" [Tawbah 9:128], to the end of the surah. But in my view this needs scrutiny. Then he related, with his chain through Tirmidhi, the hadith of Zayd bin Thabit, Abu Bakr Siddiq sent for me after the killing of the people of Yamamah, and he mentioned the hadith of the compilation of the Quran, and said, Then I found the last verses of Surah Baraah with Khuzayma bin Thabit. Then he said, This is a sahih hadith. The hadith of Zayd bin Thabit is in Tirmidhi 4:122-123, and Bukhari also narrated it. This is the well established version.As for the hadith of Abbad bin Abdullah bin Zubayr found here, it is a rejected, irregular hadith. It contradicts what is universally established and known as a necessary matter of religion, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ conveyed the Quran to his nation as distinct, well defined surahs, each separated from the next by the Basmalah, except at the beginning of Baraah. It was not for Umar, nor for anyone else, to rearrange anything within it, nor to place one verse in the place of another, nor to gather verses on their own and turn them into a surah. God forbid that any such thought should even cross Umar's mind.Then who is it that says, in this report here, "So I placed them at the end of Baraah", and in the report of Ibn Abu Dawud, "So I appended them to the end of Baraah"?! Is it Harith bin Khuzayma? No, for he was not among those entrusted with compiling the Quran into a single written copy. Is it Umar? No, the context rules this out, for this report claims that he ordered them to be placed in Baraah, meaning he was not the one who carried out the order. Or is it the narrator Abbad bin Abdullah bin Zubayr? No, he came far too late to have witnessed that, so much so that Ajli said, "As for his narration from Umar bin Khattab, it is disconnected without any doubt."As for the wording in Tafsir Ibn Kathir on this point, "So they placed them at the end of Baraah", it is not correct, and it contradicts the wording of the Musnad from which it is quoting. Perhaps it is a corruption or alteration made by one of the copyists. So this hadith is daif in its chain and rejected in its text, and it is one of those hadiths that orientalists and their followers among us play with, claiming that it casts doubt on the establishment of the Quran, and fabricating against the companions of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ whatever they fabricate.See what we have written on a similar matter under hadith 399.