Ahmad 7845

Its chain of transmission is sahih. Qays is Ibn Abu Hazim al-Bajali al-Ahmasi, one of the senior Successors, from among those who lived through both the pre-Islamic era and Islam without meeting the Prophet. This was already mentioned at 3650, and we add here that his biography appears in Ibn Saad 6:44, Ibn Abu Hatim 3/2/102, and Tadhkirat al-Huffaz 1:57-58.Bukhari narrated this hadith at 5:117 from Ubaydullah bin Saeed, and at 8:79 from Muhammad bin Ala, both of them from Abu Usama, with this chain of transmission. He also narrated it at 5:117-118 with two other chains of transmission leading to Ismail bin Abu Khalid, in a similar manner. Hafiz stated in Fath al-Bari 5:144 that this is among the reports found only in Bukhari, not in Muslim.As for his saying in the poem, "Ya laylata" (O night), Hafiz said, this is how it appears in all the narrations. Kirmani said, it is necessary to add a fa or waw at its beginning, so that it becomes properly metered. But this is questionable, because in prosody this is called al-kharm (with a dotted kha bearing a fatha, and a ra bearing a sukun), which means dropping one of the particles from the beginning of a metrical unit. What may permissibly be dropped cannot then be said to necessarily require restoring! This is something well known among specialists in the field.As for his saying, "darat al-kufr" (the abode of disbelief), Hafiz said that "darah" is more specific than "dar," and its use is common in Arab poetry, as in the verse of Imru Qays, "wa la siyyama yawman bi-darati Juljul" (especially a day at the abode of Juljul).His saying, "huwa li-wajhi Allah" (he is for the sake of Allah), means that he is free. That is why Bukhari made the title of the chapter at 5:117, "Chapter, if a man says to his slave, 'He belongs to Allah,' intending manumission."