He informed him that between their acceptance of Islam and the revelation of this verse, in which Allah reproached them, only four years had passed, "And let them not be like those who were given the Scripture before, and a long period passed over them so their hearts hardened, and many of them are defiantly disobedient" [Hadid 57:16].
حدثنا عبد الرحمن بن إبراهيم حدثنا محمد بن أبي فديك عن موسى بن يعقوب الزمعي عن أبي حازم أن
أخبره أنه لم يكن بين إسلامهم وبين أن نزلت هذه الآية يعاتبهم الله بها إلا أربع سنين {ولا يكونوا كالذين أوتوا الكتاب من قبل فطال عليهم الأمد فقست قلوبهم وكثير منهم فاسقون}
No references are available.
Sourcing, sahih. Busiri graded it sahih, and it has a corroborating witness in Sahih Muslim, hadith no. 3027/24. What is meant by "their embracing Islam" is the Islam of Ibn Masud and his companions, not Abdullah bin Zubayr, because he was born after the migration, in Madinah. The hadith has another version reported by Bazzar, as mentioned in Ibn Kathir's tafsir, 332/4, and in another copy, 45/8.