I said to myself, "I will go to the Commander of the Believers and ask him about what I heard this evening." So I came to him after the evening meal and entered upon him. He mentioned the hadith and said,"I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, 'Jibreel came to me and said, Muhammad, your nation will fall into disagreement after you.'"He said, "I asked him, 'Where is the way out, Jibreel?'"He said, "Jibreel replied, 'The Book of Allah Almighty. Through it Allah breaks every tyrant. Whoever holds fast to it is saved, and whoever abandons it is destroyed,' twice. 'It is a decisive word, not jest. Tongues cannot fabricate it, and its wonders never cease. In it is the news of what came before you, the judgment of what is between you, and the tidings of what will come after you.'"
حدثنا يعقوب حدثنا أبي عن ابن إسحاق قال وذكر محمد بن كعب القرظي
قلت لآتين أمير المؤمنين فلأسألنه عما سمعت العشية قال فجئته بعد العشاء فدخلت عليه فذكر الحديث قال ثم قال سمعت رسول الله ﷺ يقول أتاني جبريل عليه السلام فقال يا محمد إن أمتك مختلفة بعدك قال فقلت له فأين المخرج يا جبريل قال فقال كتاب الله تعالى به يقصم الله كل جبار من اعتصم به نجا ومن تركه هلك مرتين قول فصل وليس بالهزل لا تختلقه الألسن ولا تفنى أعاجيبه فيه نبأ ما كان قبلكم وفصل ما بينكم وخبر ما هو كائن بعدكم
No references are available.
Its chain is very daif because of Harith Awar. Moreover, it appears to be disconnected, based on the statement of Ibn Ishaq, who mentioned Muhammad bin Kaab Qurazi, for I did not find that he narrated from him directly, but rather he narrates in the Sirah from him through an intermediary. Thus the hadith occurs in the Musnad in abbreviated form, containing a reference to a story that is not mentioned and does not appear again elsewhere in it. For this reason Hafiz bin Kathir cited it in Fadail Quran 6-7 from the Musnad, then said, "This is how Imam Ahmad narrated it." He then mentioned another version of the hadith from Sunan Tirmidhi, through the route of Hamza Zayyat, from Abul-Mukhtar Tai, from the nephew of Harith Awar, from Harith, and he quoted Tirmidhi's statement that it is a gharib hadith, "We do not know it except through the hadith of Hamza Zayyat, and in its chain there is an unknown narrator, and there is criticism of Harith." Then Ibn Kathir said, "Hamza bin Habib Zayyat was not the only one who narrated it." Tirmidhi's version is in the Sunan 4/51-52.Ibn Ishaq here refers to Muhammad bin Ishaq, the author of the Sirah. In H and K it reads "from Ibn Ishaq," which is an error we have corrected from H (the manuscript marked with that letter), and Ibn Kathir, when citing this hadith, made clear that it is Muhammad bin Ishaq, stating his name explicitly.As for the phrase "tongues do not wear it out," this is how it reads in H and K, and it appears to derive from the wearing out of a garment, that is, its being worn threadbare, as one says "akhlaqtu the garment," meaning "I wore it out." But the form "takhtaliquhu" is a verb I did not find in the language references, and in Ibn Kathir it reads "tongues do not wear it out" (لا تخلقه), which is clear.