Ahmad 7369

Its isnad is sahih. Saeed is Maqburi. Imam Ahmad did not record the wording here in full, but only pointed to its beginning, aiming to cite Sufyan's tafsir of part of it. I have not found it elsewhere transmitted by Sufyan with this isnad. It will come in full at 7404 and 9625, where Ahmad narrated it in both places from Yahya bin Saeed, from Muhammad bin Ajlan, from Qaqa bin Hakeem, from Abu Salih, from Abu Hurairah, as a raised hadith,"May Allah show mercy to a man who rises in the night and prays, and wakes his wife so she prays, and if she refuses, he sprinkles water on her face. And may Allah show mercy to a woman who rises in the night and prays, and wakes her husband so he prays, and if he refuses, she sprinkles water on his face."It becomes clear from this that Ibn Ajlan has two teachers for this hadith, Saeed Maqburi, who transmits it to him directly from Abu Hurairah, and Qaqa, who transmits it to him from Abu Salih from Abu Hurairah. Sufyan's purpose here was to explain the word nadh (sprinkling) at this point, for the basic meaning of nadh is sprinkling with water. But Sufyan wanted to clarify that this is not what is meant in this context, since sprinkling would disturb the sleeper and make him rise startled, and he made clear that what is meant is wiping the face with water, out of gentleness toward the sleeper and to rouse him from the sluggishness of sleep. Nevertheless, some of his narrations use the expression rash (splashing) instead of nadh, as we will mention. This is perhaps due to how some narrators worded it.The hadith was narrated by Abu Dawud at 1308, 1450, 504, 543 [Awn al-Mabud], by Nasai at 1:239, by Ibn Majah at 1336, and by Hakim in al-Mustadrak at 1:309, all of them by way of Yahya bin Saeed, from Ibn Ajlan, from Qaqa, from Abu Salih, from Abu Hurairah. Hakim said, This is a sahih hadith meeting the standard of Muslim, though the two of them did not record it. Dhahabi agreed with him. It is the narration of Ibn Majah that contains the wording rash instead of nadh.