Ibn Umar heard the sound of a flute. He placed his two fingers in his ears, turned away from the road, and said to me, "Nafi, do you hear anything?"I replied, "No."He then removed his fingers from his ears and said, "I was with the Prophet ﷺ when he heard something like this, and he did the same."In the version recorded by Ahmad, the wording is, "He heard the sound of a shepherd's flute and did the same."Abu Ali al-Luluai said, "I heard Abu Dawud say, 'This is a munkar hadith.'"
سمع ابن عمر مزمارا قال: فوضع إصبعيه على أذنيه، ونأى عن الطريق، وقال لي: يا نافع هل تسمع شيئا؟ قال: فقلت: لا، قال: فرفع إصبعيه من أذنيه، وقال: كنت مع النبي ﷺ فسمع مثل هذا فصنع مثل هذا. وعند أحمد: سمع صوت زمارة راع فصنع مثل هذا. قال أبو علي اللؤلؤي: سمعت أبا داود يقول: هذا حديث منكر.
Narrated by Abu Dawud (4924), Ahmad (4535), and Ibn Hibban (693), all from the hadith of Walid bin Muslim, who said, Saeed bin Abdul-Aziz told us, from Sulayman bin Musa, from Nafi, who related it.Sulayman bin Musa is al-Ashdaq, a disputed narrator, and he is among the men relied upon by Muslim, though his narration is hasan when it does not contradict others, and it has been corroborated. Abu Dawud (4925) narrated it from Mutim bin Miqdam, and (4921) from Maymun bin Mihran, both from Nafi with similar wording, but Abu Dawud said regarding the narration of Maymun bin Mihran, "This one he found objectionable."I say, its narrators are trustworthy and its chain is sahih, and the reason for the objection is not apparent, unless it is said that it contains an acknowledgment from the Prophet ﷺ of the sound of a "shepherd's pipe," as found in the narration of Ahmad, and that Ibn Umar did not instruct Nafi to place his two fingers on his ears. The response to this is that perhaps the Prophet ﷺ did not object to the shepherd because he was far away from him, in a place he could not reach.This hadith serves as evidence for putting one's fingers in one's ears when hearing musical pipes, if one is unable to stop them otherwise.