Ahmad 4544

Its isnad is sahih. Bukhari narrated it (6:45) through Shuayb, from Zuhri, from Salim, and (9:118) through Malik, from Zuhri, from Hamza and Salim, the two sons of Abdullah bin Umar. Muslim narrated it (2:190) through Malik, through Yunus, through Sufyan bin Uyayna, and through Salih, all of them from Zuhri, from Hamza and Salim, and through Aqeel bin Khalid, through Abdul-Rahman bin Ishaq, and through Shuayb, all of them from Zuhri, from Salim.Hafiz said in Fath al-Bari (6:45), Tirmidhi transmitted from Ibn Madini and Humaydi that Sufyan used to say, "Zuhri narrated this hadith only from Salim." End quote. Ahmad likewise said, regarding Sufyan, "We only preserve it from Salim" (meaning the wording that appears here up to the end of the hadith). But this restriction is rejected, for Malik narrated it from Zuhri, from Salim and Hamza, the two sons of Abdullah bin Umar, from their father, and Malik is among the great memorizers, especially regarding the hadith of Zuhri. Likewise, Ibn Abu Umar narrated it from Sufyan himself. Muslim and Tirmidhi reported it from him. This suggests that Sufyan retracted whatever restriction he may have made.I say, I do not think the matter is so. Rather, what I consider more likely is that Sufyan bin Uyayna had heard of the anomalous narration of Ibn Abu Dhib, in which he inserted a narrator between Zuhri and Salim, namely Muhammad bin Zayd bin Qunfudh, as Hafiz mentioned at the beginning of his discussion on this matter. So Sufyan wanted to affirm that he preserved it from Zuhri directly from Salim, and this is supported by Shuayb's narration in Bukhari from Zuhri, who said, "Salim bin Abdullah informed me." This is a precise verification.As for me, the editor, none of this occurred to me at the time. I thought that Sufyan's word at the end of the hadith referred to a difference in the wording of the hadith, so I set down the word "shum" in the body of the hadith as "shuam," then set it down in Sufyan's final word as "shum"! I thought I had distinguished between the two narrations by adding an alif to the first, which put the word outside correct Arabic! But there is no such word in Arabic as "shuam." In some narrations of this hadith found in Bukhari and Muslim and others, "If misfortune is in anything, it is in the house, the woman, and the horse.""Shum" (misfortune) is well known, and its root involves the hamza, but Ibn Athir mentioned it under the letters shin, waw, mim, and said, "That is, if there is something disliked whose consequence is feared, it is in these three things." These three were singled out because he was nullifying the Arabs' practice of taking omens from birds and gazelles passing to the right or left, and the like. He said, "So if one of you has a house whose habitation he dislikes, or a woman whose companionship he dislikes, or a horse whose keeping he dislikes, let him part with it, by moving away from the house, divorcing the woman, and selling the horse." It has also been said that the misfortune of the house is its narrowness and the bad character of its neighbors, the misfortune of the woman is that she does not bear children, and the misfortune of the horse is that it cannot be used for raiding.The waw in "shum" is originally a hamza, but it was softened and became a waw. This softening became so predominant that it is no longer pronounced with the hamza, and that is why we have recorded it here in this form.Hafiz has elaborated at length in Fath al-Bari on the tafsir of the hadith and its interpretation. See also 1554.