Muslim 6794

Bukhari and Muslim included the hadith of Abdul-Ala, from Mamar, from Saeed bin Musayab, from Abu Hurairah, who said, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, "Time will draw close, miserliness will be cast into hearts, trials will increase, and killing will increase."I say, Hammad bin Zayd corroborated Abdul-Ala, but Abdul-Razzaq contradicted them both, for he did not mention Abu Hurairah and transmitted it as a mursal report. It is said that Mamar narrated it in Basra from memory, along with other hadiths in which he erred in some cases. Shuayb, Yunus, Layth bin Saad, and the nephew of Zuhri contradicted him on this point, for they narrated it from Zuhri, from Humayd, from Abu Hurairah.Both Bukhari and Muslim also included the hadith of Humayd.

Al-Hafiz said in Fath al-Bari, volume 13, page 13, commenting on Bukhari's statement, "Shuayb, Yunus, Layth, and the nephew of Zuhri said, from Humayd, from Abu Hurairah," meaning that these four narrators differed from Mamar in his wording "from Zuhri, from Saeed," since they made Zuhri's teacher Humayd rather than Saeed.Bukhari's approach implies that both routes are sahih, for he connected Mamar's route here and connected Shuayb's route in the Book of Manners. It seems he considered that this does not constitute a defect, because Zuhri was a great scholar of hadith, so it is possible that he had it from two different teachers. This does not necessarily mean the same conclusion applies to every case where narrators differ over someone's teacher, unless that person was like Zuhri in the abundance of his hadiths and teachers. Were it not for this, the narration of Yunus and those who followed him would be preferable, but Mamar's narration is not to be rejected as unsound, for the reason I have mentioned.

I say, what appears to me is that Maamar is considered anomalous in this hadith, since he contradicted four of the companions of Zuhri, namely Yunus, Layth, Shuayb, and the nephew of Zuhri, as well as Ishaq bin Yahya and Abdul-Rahman bin Yazid bin Jabir, as will come in the words of Daraqutni from al-Ilal, making the total of them six.Among the evidence that he did not master this hadith precisely is that he sometimes narrates it from Saeed from Abu Hurairah, as mentioned before, and sometimes narrates it from Hammam from Abu Hurairah, as found in Muslim, vol. 16, p. 223, and sometimes he transmits it without the full chain, as mentioned by Daraqutni.As for the wording of the hadith, it is firmly established from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, through the hadith of Abu Hurairah, coming by multiple routes.Daraqutni said in al-Ilal, vol. 3, p. 80, "The hadith 'Time will draw close' is narrated by Zuhri, and there is disagreement about it. Maamar narrated it from Zuhri from Saeed bin Musayab from Abu Hurairah, but Yunus bin Yazid and Ishaq bin Yahya contradicted him, narrating it instead from Zuhri from Humayd bin Abdul-Rahman from Abu Hurairah. Likewise, Abdul-Rahman bin Yazid bin Jabir said it was from Zuhri from Humayd from Abu Hurairah. The preserved version is the hadith of Humayd." End of quote.