Ahmad 6530

Its isnad is sahih. Rayhan bin Yazid Amiri was a trustworthy Tabii. He was declared trustworthy by Ibn Main and by Saad bin Ibrahim, as will come, and by Ibn Hibban. Abu Hatim said, "Unknown," but others knew him and declared him trustworthy. Bukhari gave his biography in Kabir (301/1/2), without mentioning any criticism of him.The hadith was narrated by Tayalisi (2271) from Sufyan Thawri, by Darimi (2:386), by Tirmidhi (2:20), and by Ibn Jarud in Muntaqa (186), all of them through Sufyan Thawri, with this isnad and wording. Daraqutni also narrated it (211) through Thawri with this same isnad, but with the wording "one of strength who is powerful."Abu Dawud narrated it (1634, 2:37 in Awn al-Mabud) through Ibrahim bin Saad, from his father, from Rayhan, from Abdullah bin Amr, raising it to the Prophet, with this wording. Hakim narrated it (1:407) through Sufyan Thawri from Saad bin Ibrahim, through Ibrahim bin Saad from his father, and through Shubah from Saad, with this isnad raising it to the Prophet, with the wording, "Charity is not lawful for a wealthy person, nor for one of strength who is powerful." Then Hakim said, "This is how Thawri and Shubah said it, while in the hadith of Ibrahim bin Saad it is 'sound of limb.'"Some scholars have found faults in this hadith that do not hold up under scrutiny. I will mention them, Allah willing.Tirmidhi said after narrating it, "The hadith of Abdullah bin Amr is hasan. Shubah narrated this hadith from Saad bin Ibrahim with this isnad without raising it to the Prophet." It has also been narrated, in a different hadith, from the Prophet ﷺ, "Begging is not lawful for a wealthy person, nor for one of strength who is sound of limb." If a man is strong but in need, and has nothing, and charity is given to him, it suffices for the giver of charity, according to the people of knowledge. Some scholars interpret this hadith as referring to begging.Abu Dawud said after narrating it, "Sufyan narrated it from Saad bin Ibrahim just as Ibrahim said it. Shubah narrated it from Saad, saying, 'one of strength who is powerful.'" The other hadiths from the Prophet ﷺ use, in some, "one of strength who is powerful," and in others, "one of strength who is sound of limb." Ataa bin Zuhayr said that he met Abdullah bin Amr, who said, "Charity is not lawful for a strong person nor for one of strength who is sound of limb."The hadith will come again (6798). Ahmad narrated it from Waki and Abdul-Rahman bin Mahdi, from Sufyan Thawri, with this isnad and wording. Imam Ahmad then said afterward, "Abdul-Rahman said, 'powerful' [meaning instead of 'sound of limb']." Abdul-Rahman bin Mahdi said, "Neither Saad nor his son," meaning Ibrahim bin Saad, "raised it to the Prophet."Bukhari mentioned it in Kabir, in the biography of Rayhan, as follows. Hajjaj said, Shubah narrated to us from Saad bin Ibrahim, who heard Rayhan, and he was a truthful Bedouin, who heard Abdullah bin Amr, from the Prophet ﷺ, "Charity is not lawful for a wealthy person." Ibrahim bin Saad narrated it from his father without raising it to the Prophet. Abu Naeem said, Sufyan narrated to us from Saad, from Rayhan bin Yazid Amiri, from Abdullah bin Amr, from the Prophet ﷺ.What we conclude from these narrations is that three reliable and precise memorizers narrated it from Saad bin Ibrahim, and that all of them narrated it from him raising it to the Prophet, and that it has been reported of some of them that they narrated it as a stopped report attributed only to the companion, though I did not find a chain of transmission from any of them explicitly narrating it that way.Thawri narrated it from Saad, raising it to the Prophet, as found in Ahmad in both places, and in Tayalisi, Bukhari in Kabir, Darimi, Tirmidhi, Ibn Jarud, Hakim, and Daraqutni. The narration from him did not differ regarding the raising of it to the Prophet, and no one has reported from him, as far as has reached us, that he narrated it as a stopped report.Shubah also narrated it from Saad, raising it to the Prophet as well, as found in Bukhari in Kabir and in Hakim. Tirmidhi reported from him, in a suspended report without a chain, that he did not raise it to the Prophet. There is no harm in that, if it is confirmed and established, for a narrator may raise a hadith to the Prophet at one time and stop it at the companion at another. Raising it to the Prophet is an accepted addition from a trustworthy narrator.Ibrahim bin Saad also narrated it from his father, raising it to the Prophet, as found in Abu Dawud and in Hakim. Ahmad narrated (2798) from Abdul-Rahman bin Mahdi his statement, "Neither Saad nor his son," meaning Ibrahim bin Saad, "raised it to the Prophet." This is connected in Ahmad's chain to his shaykh Abdul-Rahman bin Mahdi, who narrated the hadith from Thawri. But is it connected between Ibn Mahdi and Saad and his son Ibrahim? This may be, for Saad belongs to the generation of Ibn Mahdi's teachers, and his son Ibrahim bin Saad is a contemporary of Ibn Mahdi, but he did not explicitly state that he heard that from either of them, especially since he did not narrate this hadith from Saad himself, but rather narrated it from Thawri, from Saad.What appears to me is that he heard it from Ibrahim bin Saad, from his father, as a stopped report, just as he heard it from Thawri, from Saad, raising it to the Prophet, so he affirmed both cases, narrating the version raised to the Prophet and pointing to the stopped one. This is supported by the fact that Bukhari indicated that Ibrahim bin Saad narrated it from his father as a stopped report without raising it to the Prophet, so Ibrahim too would have narrated it once raising it to the Prophet and once stopping it at the companion.There remains the statement of Abu Dawud, "Ataa bin Zuhayr said that he met Abdullah bin Amr, who said, 'Charity is not lawful for a misguided person, nor for one of strength who is sound of limb.'" This is something I do not know the nature of, nor its explanation, whether from the standpoint of the isnad or the wording. I did not find a biography for this Ataa bin Zuhayr in Tahdhib or its branches, and I do not know how they left him out, when he appears in Sunan Abu Dawud, one of the six books. Nor did I find a biography for him in Tajil, nor in Mizan, nor in Lisan Mizan.Indeed, Ibn Abu Hatim gave his biography in Jarh wa Tadil (3/1/332), saying, "Ataa bin Zuhayr bin Asbagh narrated from his father, and Shumayt and Akhdar, the two sons of Ajlan, narrated from him. I heard my father say that."This is the one Abu Dawud mentioned, but he made an error in memory, or he heard it with a chain in which some of its narrators erred, so he mentioned it in this suspended, disconnected form, and he, or someone above him, erred in the wording of the stopped hadith, saying, "not lawful for a misguided person, nor for one of strength who is sound of limb." Yet one of strength who is sound of limb is the same as the strong one, as will come.The proof of the error in this narration of Abu Dawud is that Bukhari gave a biography, in Kabir (2/1/392), of Zuhayr, the father of this Ataa, saying, "Zuhayr bin Asbagh Amiri heard from Abdullah bin Amr, and his son Ataa narrated from him." Then he gave a biography, in it (2/2/263-264), of Shumayt bin Ajlan, whom Ibn Abu Hatim mentioned as having narrated from Ataa bin Zuhayr, saying, "Shumayt bin Ajlan, Abu Abdullah Basri, brother of Akhdar Tamimi, also said to be Taymi, his son Abdullah narrated from him, and Sayar bin Hatim said he was Qaysi."He narrated from Ataa bin Zuhayr, from his father, "I met Abdullah bin Amr and said, 'Tell me about charity.' He said, 'It is the worst of wealth, the wealth of the blind, the lame, the crippled, the orphans, and everyone who is cut off and dependent on it.' I said, 'Do those who work to collect it have a right to it?' He said, 'According to their labor.' I said, 'And those who fight in Allah's cause?' He said, 'They are a people for whom it has been made lawful. Charity is not lawful for a wealthy person, nor for one of strength who is sound of limb.'"Isa bin Ibrahim narrated to me, Abdul-Aziz bin Muslim narrated to us, Shumayt bin Ajlan narrated to us, from his father, who heard Ibn Umar. This last isnad in Kabir is garbled and confused. Its editor, the eminent scholar Shaykh Abdul-Rahman bin Yahya Muallimi, wrote on it the following note, "As is, though the correct version may be... Shumayt bin Ajlan narrated to us, from Ataa, from his father, who heard Ibn Amr." This correction is certain, as is clear from the context of the biography.This account, which Bukhari presented and narrated with his chain, indicates the error that occurred in Abu Dawud's suspended narration, the error in the disconnected isnad, and then the error in the text. It shows that Ataa bin Zuhayr did not meet Abdullah bin Amr, and that the one who met him was his father, Zuhayr bin Asbagh, and that Ataa bin Zuhayr only narrated that from his father, and Shumayt bin Ajlan narrated it from this Ataa, from his father.Zuhayr, the father of Ataa, asked Abdullah bin Amr about charity, and he belittled it, to discourage accepting it or taking charge of it, until he argued with him about the entitlement of those who work to collect it and those who fight in Allah's cause, and he made clear to him that this was only to the extent Allah had permitted, as a warning against going beyond what Allah had made lawful regarding it. He then reinforced this by telling him that it is not lawful for a wealthy person, nor for one of strength who is sound of limb.This does not indicate that his narration is a stopped report rather than one raised to the Prophet, as Abu Dawud's statement suggests, as if he were pointing to a fault in the narration raised to the Prophet by means of this stopped narration, which he narrated in suspended form, and narrated it in a manner that was entirely erroneous. Perhaps Abu Dawud mentioned it in suspended form for this reason, because of the error it contained in both the isnad and the text, so he refrained from presenting it with its chain in the manner of his other narrations in his book, since it was, in his view, in a form he could not feel confident about.Beyond this, even if the hadith were, in wording, only a stopped report, it would be, in meaning, raised to the Prophet, because when a companion relates a prohibition or a permission, or a command or a prohibition, it is understood as a report from the Prophet ﷺ. We have already spoken about this meaning previously, in the explanation of the hadith "Two dead things have been made lawful for us" (5723), and we pointed to some statements of the imams on that matter.We add here the statement of Khatib Baghdadi in his book Kifayah fi Ilm Riwayah (p. 421), where he said, "Most of the people of knowledge said that a companion's statement, 'We were commanded to do such and such,' must be understood as the command of Allah and His Messenger." A group among them said that one must withhold judgment on that, because it is not certain that he means by it the command of the learned leaders, just as he might mean by it the command of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. The first view is more correct.The evidence for this is that when a companion says, "We were commanded to do such and such," he only intends to argue for the establishment of a legal ruling, a permission, a prohibition, or a ruling that must be legislated. It has been established that no permission or prohibition becomes obligatory by the command of leaders and scholars unless it is a command from Allah and His Messenger, and it has been established that blind imitation of them is not valid.Since that is the case, it would not be permissible for a companion to say, "We were commanded to do such and such," or "We were forbidden from such and such," to inform us of the establishment of a legal ruling and the necessity of a ruling in the religion, while meaning the command of someone other than the Messenger, someone whose obedience is not obligatory and by whose word no legal ruling is established. Whenever he means someone in that position, he must qualify it with something indicating that he did not mean the command of one by whose command a legal ruling is established. This very same indication requires that his statement, "It is from the sunnah to do such and such," be understood as the sunnah of the Messenger ﷺ.This is from what they said regarding a companion's statement, "We were commanded to do such and such" or "We were forbidden from such and such," in the passive form where the agent is not named. It is even more, and more, applicable when he explicitly states permission or prohibition, as in the statement of Abdullah bin Amr here, in the stopped narration, "Charity is not lawful..." and so on.For when he argues with Zuhayr bin Asbagh about charity, and presents proof to him and argues with him, that charity is not lawful for a wealthy person, nor for one of strength who is sound of limb, he is only presenting proof to him from the sahih sunnah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, who conveys from Allah what is permitted and what is forbidden, not presenting proof from his own statement, nor his own opinion, nor the statement of anyone, nor the opinion of anyone other than the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. This hadith, then, is sahih whether raised to the Prophet or stopped at the companion, it has no defect, and everyone who found fault with it was mistaken.The hadith has also been confirmed with this wording from the hadith of Abu Hurairah, with a sahih isnad meeting the standard of the two Shaykhs. Ahmad narrated it, as will come, at 8895 and 9049. Nasai narrated it (1:313), and Ibn Majah (289), and Hakim (407)."Al-marrah," with a kasrah on the mim and a shaddah on the fatha ra, means power and strength. And "al-sawiyy" means one whose limbs are sound, meaning the strong one, as Darimi explained it in his Sunan following his narration of the hadith.