Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri: Reliable or Not?

Introduction

Who was Zuhri?

Muhammad ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (often called Ibn Shihab or Zuhri) was a major collector and teacher of hadith in the generation of the younger tabi’oon (those who met the companions of the Prophet) in Madinah. He met and narrated from younger companions like Anas ibn Malik and Sahl ibn Saad (RA). He even met Ibn Umar (RA) and narrated a handful of narrations from him.

He collected and memorized hadith from different narrators in Madinah and Hijaz and taught hadith in classes. Later in his life, he went to Syria and taught hadith there as well.

Hadith scholars classified narrators using four major methods:

1. Their reputation
2. Reports about them
3. Their consistency
4. How they compared to other narrators

As for reputation, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri was the scholar par excellence of Madinah in his time. This does not require any contrived evidence. Even the fact that major scholars of the generation below him (Malik, Sufyan ibn Uyainah, and Laith ibn Saad) from all the different regions held him in high esteem and narrated from him is enough evidence.

Arak ibn Malik was asked, “Who is the greatest jurist of Madinah?” Arak said, “As for the one who knew the judgements of the Prophet (SAW), Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman best, it was Saeed ibn al-Musayyab. As for the one who knew the most hadith, it was Urwah ibn al-Zubair. And if you wanted to make an ocean (of knowledge) flow out of Ubaidullah ibn Abdullah, you could do it.”

Then, Arak said, “The most knowledgeable of all of them is Ibn Shihab, because he combined all their knowledge with his own.”

Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri learned and narrated from all three: Saeed, Urwah, and Ubaidullah.

Malik ibn Anas said, “This subject (hadith) is the religion, so watch whom you take your religion from. We have seen in this masjid (and he pointed at Masjid Nabawi) 70 people who used to say ‘XYZ said: The Prophet (SAW) said’ but I did not take from any of them. Even though if any of them had been put in charge of the Bait ul-Maal, he would have been trustworthy, they were simply not people of this subject. But, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri came to us and we would crowd at his doorstep.”

As for reports, there is no shortage of reports about the reliability of Zuhri.

Amr ibn Dinar (a contemporary) said, “I have not seen anyone more accurate in hadith than Zuhri. I have also never seen anyone who did not care about money as much as him. Money to him was not more valuable than dung.”

Abu Bakr al-Huzali said, “I have sat with Hasan al-Basri and Ibn Sirin, but I have not seen anyone more knowledgeable than Zuhri.”

Ubaidullah ibn Umar said: When I started seeking knowledge, I started going to the old men of the family of Umar ibn al-Khattab one by one asking them, “What did you hear from Salim (ibn Abdullah ibn Umar)?” Whenever I came to a man asking him that, he would say, “Go to Ibn Shihab because he used to accompany Salim closely.” But, Ibn Shihab was in Syria at the time.

Salim ibn Abdullah ibn Umar was the son of Abdullah ibn Umar (RA) and was a major scholar in Madinah in his generation.

As for his consistency and comparison to other narrators, the scholars analyzed his narrations and concluded he was reliable.

Ali ibn al-Madini said, “He had roughly 2000 hadith (i.e. both musnad and not musnad).”

Ahmad ibn al-Farrat said, “No one was better in musnad hadith than Zuhri. He had roughly 1000 (musnad) hadith.”

Abu Dawud said, “Zuhri narrated more than a thousand musnad hadith from reliable narrators. The hadith of Zuhri in totality, however, are 2200. Half of them are musnad. […] As for what [his students] differed about, they are 50 hadith. Difference is when one group narrates one way and another group narrates another way.”

Abu Bakr ibn Manjawaih said (paraphrased), “He was one of the most precise in the contents of hadith in his generation.”

All of this is taken from Tahzeeb ul-Kamal, which collects biographical information on major narrators of hadith.

Are the methods of classifying narrators justified?

Question 1: Why is reputation a good metric to judge a narrator?

Let us consider the practical example of news sources. If you were attempting to determine the authenticity of some news and found that it was reported by the Associated Press and BBC, you would trust that news in the absence of other evidence.

That is because BBC and Associated Press simply have a strong enough reputation that you don’t expect them to outright fabricate news. They may put spin or bias into how they report it, but you don’t expect complete (intentional) fabrication.

If they did outright fabricate news, that would be a huge scandal and they would be exposed for it.

In the same way, the scholars of hadith realized that there were some scholars who were simply huge and famous enough that there were two reasons to trust them by default (until contrary evidence):

1. If they were not honest or did not have integrity, they could not have gained such a reputation of reliability among their peers and students.
2. They were too famous and well-known and narrated too many hadith to too many students to get away with intentional fabrication without being easily exposed.

In the generation of the younger tabi’oon, these narrators included Zuhri, A’mash, Qatadah, and others.

It is not an arbitrary choice. It is relying on the immense difficulty of pulling the wool over so many eyes.

Skeptics have to advance spectacular, farfetched theories to explain why even these famous narrators might have been liars, like saying most Muslims did not care about truth at the time or were simply blind enough to uncritically accept hadith from anyone who narrated a lot of them or simply chose narrators who supported ‘orthodoxy’ to make famous.

All these require the existence of ridiculous conspiracies and do not explain why narrators of the same generation were weakened even if they did not oppose orthodoxy in any way, like Aasim ibn Ubaidullah and others.

Question 2: Is Tahzeeb ul-Kamal a reliable source?

Tahzeeb ul-Kamal was written by al-Mizzi (d. 742). In it, Mizzi collected all the biographical information he could find about narrators including the views of different scholars regarding their reliability.

Some of the works Mizzi cited are still with us today. Many of the works are lost.

Even if many works are lost, we can rely on Mizzi being reliable in his transmission because we can tell his reliability by comparing his citations of books that still exist with our editions of them. He is exact and reliable.

Tahzeeb ul-Kamal also became a very famous book. Some people wrote summaries of it. Some people wrote works adding information Mizzi missed. All of this happened within a few generations of him writing the book.

If Mizzi were making quotes up, scholars of the time would have noticed, especially considering how famous the book became.

Question 3: Even if Mizzi’s Tahzeeb ul-Kamal is reliable, is the biographical corpus he quotes from reliable?

There are many reasons to consider the biographical corpus genuine. In addition to the fact that it is often paired with chains of narration of reliable people, there are different secondary signs of its reliability.

One sign is the fact that there is much more commentary about later narrators than earlier ones. If biographical information were being fabricated, it would have made more sense to create information about earlier narrators rather than about later narrators who were much more replaceable as sources, since hadith narration became much more prolific in the later generation.

However, this is not the place to get into a detailed defense of the corpus.

What are the sources of Zuhri’s corpus?

There are two discussions to have in this section:

1. Who were Zuhri’s immediate students?
2. Which books record Zuhri’s narrations?

Students

Zuhri had some prolific, reliable students and some less reliable students. The scholars of hadith classified them by comparing their narrations to each other, in addition to the reputation and reports about these students and how much they accompanied Zuhri.

When analyzing the corpus, scholars noticed that a group of students tended to narrate the hadith of Zuhri similar to each other and these also tended to be those famous for learning from and accompanying Zuhri. As a result, these students were classified as reliable while those who tended to oppose these reliable students in predictable ways were classified as weak.

For example, no one needed to determine Malik ibn Anas’s reliability from Zuhri because he was a known and reliable student, but they could determine Shuaib’s reliability by comparing him to Malik and noticing his consistency. On the other hand, Ibn Ishaq and others having slight deviations from Malik and Shuaib indicated he was mediocre in his narration from Zuhri.

There was broad agreement among the hadith scholars about who was reliable and who was not but there was some disagreement over the relative rank among reliable students. The following is a general account.

The three most reliable students of Zuhri were Malik ibn Anas, Yunus ibn Yazeed, and Ma’mar ibn Rashid.

Closely following after them were Shuaib ibn Abi Hamzah, Uqail ibn Khalid, and Sufyan ibn Uyainah.

Other reliable students of Zuhri included Awza’i, Zubaidi, and Salih ibn Kaisan.

Then, there were students who were trustworthy and useful from Zuhri but did not reach the level of the others in reliability.

This included students like Muhammad ibn Ishaq, Muhammad ibn Abi Hafsah, and Muhammad ibn Abi Zi’b.

Then, there were students known to be weak from Zuhri.

This included Jafar ibn Burqan and others.

Among the reliable students, some learned from Zuhri earlier in his life and some later in his life.

Yunus, Uqail, and Ma’mar were early students of Zuhri. By comparison, Shuaib and Ibn Uyainah were later students.

Books

Although there were so many students who narrated from Zuhri, not all of them wrote down their hadith, and we do not have extant books from all those who did write down hadith. However, some of their writings still exist.

Malik ibn Anas wrote the Muwatta where he included many of Zuhri’s hadith. The Muwatta is one of the oldest, extant books of hadith.

Ma’mar wrote down many of his hadith into the Jami’. Then, his student Abd al-Razzaq recorded Ma’mar’s traditions, including the Jami’, in his book the Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq.

We do not have a direct collection from Yunus ibn Yazeed. However, we have existing collections from two of his students: Ibn Wahb and Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak.

We do not have a direct collection from Sufyan ibn Uyainah, but we have a Musnad by his student al-Humaidi. However, unlike the above collections, a Musnad records specifically fully-connected (in chain), prophetic hadith rather than all narrations.

In addition to this, hadith from all the students of Zuhri, including the above four, are recorded through different chains in the many collections of hadith.

For example, Shuaib ibn Abi Hamzah noted down his narrations from Zuhri in his private notes. Abu al-Yaman received these hadith from him. Bukhari received those hadith from Abu al-Yaman and recorded many of them in his Sahih.

Can we manually show Zuhri’s reliability?

As I have explained above, the hadith scholars followed a rational and reliable method of determining the reliability of narrators like Zuhri. So, it is irrational to be overly skeptical and reject their judgements.

However, Zuhri can be used as a case study to verify the judgement of the hadith scholars. Since we have so much of his corpus, can we see his reliability independent from the judgement of the hadith scholars?

We can, and even several non-Muslim scholars have partly realized that a lot of Zuhri’s hadith corpus is credible.

Schoeler says:

Today, we can say a considerable part of al-Zuhri’s source indications are authentic.

The Biography of Muhammad (SAW): The Issue of Sources, p. 94

Motzki says:

It is hard to imagine that Zuhrī faked those ahādīth that were completely inconsistent with his own legal opinion, or that he would have accepted them from some one he did not know very well.

Analysing Muslim Traditions, p. 43

That is not to say Schoeler or Motzki completely concede to Zuhri’s reliability; in fact, we will respond to some of Schoeler’s arguments at the end of this article. However, these quotes demonstrate that Zuhri’s general honesty and reliability are difficult to deny even for skeptics from outside Islam.

In this article, I will attempt to gather evidence and examples to show Zuhri’s honesty and reliability for the sincere reader, even beyond the hesitant appreciation of orientalists like Schoeler and Motzki.

For the purposes of the case study, I will attempt to stick to earlier extant works, like the Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq and the collections of Malik, Ibn Wahb, and Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak to extract examples, so that even an irrational skeptic who thinks later books are filled with fabrication can benefit. However, I will use other collections of hadith to note whether a report is corroborated from Zuhri through other routes than the one found in the earlier works.

This article will be divided into three discussions:

First, we will discuss examples that show Zuhri’s honesty and integrity as a hadith narrator.

Second, we will discuss examples that show Zuhri’s reliability and memory when narrating hadith.

Third, we will discuss a hadith of Zuhri that Schoeler criticized—the hadith of first revelation—and whether the criticism holds weight.

Evidence of Integrity

When you study the narrations of Zuhri, you find strong evidence of his honesty and carefulness.

Did Zuhri give complete chains whenever he could?

A simple way of showing Zuhri’s integrity is when he intentionally narrated a hadith mursal (disconnected) or without chain instead of musnad (fully-connected). A person of no integrity or honesty would prefer to narrate hadith as musnad to make them ‘better’.

The following are a few examples of Zuhri showing his integrity in this way.

Example 1

Ma’mar narrated from Zuhri that Aisha (RA) and Hafsa (RA) were fasting one day but some food that they liked was sent to them so they broke their fast. Then, Hafsa asked the Prophet (SAW) about it and he said, “Make up one day for it.”

Ibn Juraij asked Zuhri, “Did Urwah narrate to you from Aisha that anyone who breaks a voluntary fast should make it up?” Zuhri said, “I did not hear anything from Urwah on this topic, but in the reign of Sulaiman a man narrated to me from some people who used to ask Aisha (RA) [and he mentioned the above hadith].” (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

This hadith was narrated from Zuhri like this (in mursal form) by Ma’mar, Ibn Juraij, Malik, Yunus, Abdullah ibn Umar, and others.

If Zuhri were dishonest, it would have been easy for him to make this hadith fully connected using his prolific teacher Urwah. But, he explicitly specified it is disconnected.

Zuhri narrated many hadith from Urwah from Aisha (RA). If we are working from an extreme skepticism of the Muslims of that era, we would have to say no one would notice the fabrication. So, why didn’t he fabricate other than because he was honest?

Then, if Zuhri were not precise in his memory, it would have been easy to confuse this hadith as coming from Urwah for the same reason as above. However, he maintained consistency in how he narrated this hadith to multiple students.

We know he did not narrate it connected to anyone because no major student of Zuhri narrated this hadith connected. If the hadith had been connected, it would have become widespread and famous.

Example 2

Zuhri narrated from Urwah and Saeed ibn al-Musayyab that some Jews of Banu Zuraiq did magic on the Prophet (SAW), as part of a longer story. (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

Both Urwah and Saeed were not companions of the Prophet (SAW).

Ma’mar, Yunus, and Muhammad ibn Abdullah narrated the hadith from Zuhri like this in mursal form.

This story is narrated by Hisham ibn Urwah from Urwah from Aisha (RA) with a connected chain. It is recorded through this chain in many collections. If Zuhri ever made this hadith musnad, it would have become famous and would have been recorded as well. Hence, we know he never made the hadith musnad.

If Zuhri were dishonest or unreliable, he could have easily added Aisha (RA) to the chain after Urwah or added Abu Hurairah after Saeed ibn al-Musayyab. Both were extremely common chains he narrated hadith through.

However, he was not dishonest or unreliable.

Example 3

Ma’mar asked Zuhri, “If a man commits zina with a woman, does her daughter become haram for him?” Zuhri said, “Haram cannot make the halal haram.” Ma’mar asked, “Do you have a hadith of this from the Prophet (SAW)?” Zuhri said, “No, I just heard it from some people.” (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

This view is narrated from Saeed ibn al-Musayyab and Urwah ibn al-Zubair, teachers of Zuhri and jurists of Madinah.

If Zuhri used to fabricate hadith, it would have been easy for him to create a chain to attribute this to the Prophet (SAW), especially when prompted for a chain.

However, clearly, Zuhri was not dishonest.

Example 4

Zuhri said, “The khutbah of the Prophet (SAW) on Friday was two standings with a sitting in between.” Ma’mar asked, “Did you get this from someone reliable?” Zuhri said, “Yes, like you want.” (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

No one else narrated this from Zuhri. So, Zuhri never gave this hadith a connected isnad in his life.

If Zuhri used to fabricate hadith, he could have fabricated an isnad for the hadith, especially when prompted.

However, clearly, Zuhri was not dishonest.

Example 5

Zuhri narrated from Ali ibn Husain Zain ul-Abideen, “The Prophet (SAW) used to do takbeer whenever he went up or down in Salah. This was his Salah until he reached Allah.” (Muwatta Malik)

Malik, Ibn Uyainah, Yunus, and Ibn Sam’an all narrated this hadith from Zuhri with this chain and wording.

Zain ul-Abideen never met the Prophet (SAW). If Zuhri wished to connect the hadith, he could have used any number of chains which he already used to narrate other hadith through Zain ul-Abideen with a connected chain to the Prophet (SAW). He could have even used the family chain Ali ibn Husain from Husain (RA) from Ali ibn Abi Talib (RA) which was highly approved.

However, he did not do that, neither for students early in his life (Yunus) or later in his life (Ibn Uyainah).

Similarly, if Zuhri was unreliable or imprecise in his memory, he would have forgetfully connected the chain instead of remaining stable throughout his life.

Example 6

Ma’mar asked Zuhri about praying on carpets. Zuhri said, “I don’t think there’s an issue with it. The Prophet (SAW) used to pray on a mat.” (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

Yunus narrated the same from Zuhri, like Ma’mar, without isnad. Ibn Wahb narrated this from Yunus. Uthman ibn Umar narrated this hadith from Yunus from Zuhri from Urwah from Aisha. However, it is clear Uthman made a mistake since we have a more accurate narration from Yunus.

Other than that, no one narrated this hadith from Zuhri with a connected isnad. If Zuhri had narrated this hadith with a connected isnad at any time in his life, it would have become famous and people would have transmitted it from him, especially because whether you can pray on a mat was a famous legal question between the Sunnis and Shias. The lack of transmission proves he never turned this hadith musnad.

If Zuhri were dishonest, he could have fabricated a chain for this hadith to support his legal opinion. However, he did not, showing his honesty and reliability.

Did Zuhri always give the ‘best’ chains that he could?

Zuhri had access to several pristine chains of hadith to the Prophet (SAW). So, another evidence of his integrity is that he did not always use these perfect chains to narrate hadith even though he had access to them.

Example 1

Zuhri narrated several hadith from Anas ibn Malik (RA). There are 11 hadith with this chain in the Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq.

The vast majority of them have to do with Salah. In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq, 9 out of 11 narrations of Zuhri from Anas are about Salah. In the Muwatta of Malik, 2 out of 5 narrations are about Salah. In the Muwatta of Ibn Wahb, all 3 out of 3 are about Salah.

The reason for this emphasis on Salah is explained by the context of Zuhri’s meeting with Anas ibn Malik.

Zuhri said: I entered upon Anas ibn Malik in Damascus and he was crying. I asked him, “Why are you crying?” He said, “I don’t recognize anything that I see except Salah, and even this Salah is being ruined (by being delayed).” (Sahih Bukhari)

This explains why most of his narrations from Anas have to do with Salah and many have to do with the times of Salah.

This, first of all, proves the reliability of Zuhri’s hadith from Anas ibn Malik. If he had fabricated them, we would not expect a topical consistency in them that fits the context of his meeting with Anas. He would have used Anas’s hadith to support whatever opinion he wished to support. However, clearly, Zuhri’s hadith from Anas are genuine.

Secondly, if Zuhri were in the business of fabricating hadith or altering chains, it would have been easy for him to attribute many different hadith to Anas (which would mean only one person between him and the Prophet).

However, we find in Zuhri’s corpus that he narrates mostly from older tabi’oon of Madinah like Saeed ibn al-Musayyab, Urwah ibn al-Zubair, Salim ibn Abdullah, and Ubaidullah ibn Abdullah. There are about 72 narrations of Zuhri from Saeed ibn al-Musayyab in Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq alone on a variety of different topics (with no focus on Salah like in the narrations from Anas).

Why only narrate a handful of hadith from Anas but most hadith from non-companions?

This is what we expect from an honest narrator of hadith. A dishonest narrator would not intentionally choose a longer chain when he has access to a shorter one.

Example 2

The most illustrious of Zuhri’s teachers who narrated from Abu Hurairah was definitely Saeed ibn al-Musayyab, a major scholar of Madinah in the generation before Zuhri.

In Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq, there are 68 narrations of Zuhri from Abu Hurairah. 30 of those narrations are through Ibn al-Musayyab. However, about 38 out of 68 (more than half) of these narrations do not come from Ibn al-Musayyab.

There is no reason for a dishonest narrator to narrate hadith from other than famous and accepted sources of hadith that he already has the ability to narrate from, especially when the other sources are not as famous or well-known as Ibn al-Musayyab.

In one narration, Zuhri says, “I heard a man from Muzainah narrating from Abu Hurairah while we were with Ibn al-Musayyab”! (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

Ma’mar, Ibn Ishaq, and Ibrahim ibn Saad all narrated this from Zuhri with this chain from an unknown “man from Muzainah.”

It would have been even easier for Zuhri to alter this narration! He could have narrated it directly from Ibn al-Musayyab from Abu Hurairah. However, he specified it was only from an unknown “man from Muzainah” while Ibn al-Musayyab was present.

This is only something we expect from an honest person, not a dishonest one.

Did Zuhri narrate only hadith that support him?

If Zuhri were fabricating hadith or were even hiding hadith he did not like, we would not expect him to narrate hadith that go against his own view or the view of ‘orthodoxy’. However, we find the opposite in Zuhri’s hadith corpus.

Example 1

There was an early debate in Islam whether eating cooked food breaks wudhu or not.

Abd al-Razzaq noted that Ma’mar and Zuhri used to do wudhu after eating cooked food. (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

Despite having this position, Zuhri narrated hadith for both sides of the debate.

For it not breaking wudhu, Zuhri narrated from Ibn Amr ibn Umayyah from his father that: He saw the Prophet (SAW) eating from a piece of lamb before he stood up for Salah without doing wudhu. (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

He also narrated several hadith for it breaking wudhu.

Zuhri narrated from Abu Salamah from Abu Sufyan ibn al-Mughirah that: He entered upon Umm Habibah who gave him some soup. Then, he stood up for Salah, but Umm Habibah said, “Do wudhu my nephew, because I heard the Messenger of Allah say, ‘Do wudhu from anything that touches the fire.'” (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

Zuhri narrated from Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz from Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Qariz from Abu Hurairah: The Prophet (SAW) said, “Do wudhu from whatever touches the fire.” (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

Note also how Zuhri did not create any hadith with one of his famous chains to support his position. He did not narrate the hadith of Abu Hurairah through Saeed ibn al-Musayyab. This does not make sense if Zuhri were dishonest or making up hadith.

It also does not make sense for Zuhri to narrate or fabricate hadith for both sides of the debate if he were a dishonest narrator.

Example 2

There was a debate whether adults could establish a foster relationship. The decisive view among the scholars of Madinah and elsewhere was that only children can establish foster relationships.

However, Zuhri narrated a prophetic hadith that (ostensibly) allows it even though this opposed his own view and the view of the prevailing school of Madinah.

Zuhri narrated from Urwah ibn al-Zubair from Aisha (RA) that the Prophet (SAW) allowed Salim to establish a foster relationship when he was an adult. Aisha (RA) considered this evidence to allow it. The other wives of the Prophet (SAW) used to say this was specific to Salim. (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

Ma’mar, Malik, Uqail, Yunus, Ibn Ishaq, Shuaib, and others reported this hadith from Zuhri.

Zuhri narrating this hadith and the view of Aisha (RA) despite the fact that it opposed him and the prevalent view of orthodoxy proves that he was honest and reported what he received without distorting it.

It is in this context that Motzki said:

It is hard to imagine that Zuhrī faked those ahādīth that were completely inconsistent with his own legal opinion, or that he would have accepted them from some one he did not know very well.

Analysing Muslim Traditions, p. 43

Did Zuhri have pro-Umayyad leanings that affect his hadith?

A common accusation against Zuhri is that he was pro-Umayyad. There are two types of evidence given for this view: 1) The fact that Zuhri had a close relationship with several Umayyad figures and was even a tutor to the children of one of the Umayyad Caliphs, and 2) The claim that Zuhri was alone in narrating some pro-Umayyad hadith, hence he must have fabricated them.

As for the first, even if we grant that Zuhri was pro-Umayyad in a political sense, that does not impugn his honesty nor can it color our acceptance of his narrations because of the overwhelming testimony by different scholars about his reliability and the clear evidence within his narrations, some of which this article has already presented. A person having a personal or political preference does not prove he was dishonest or fabricated hadith.

If the mere existence of political preferences prevented a person from being reliable, that would entail no one in the world is reliable, since everyone has political preferences.

As for the second, some hadith have been accused of being like this and all of them are poor arguments.

Firstly, being alone in narrating a particular hadith is not evidence of dishonesty, especially in the time of Zuhri, since hadith had not proliferated as much by that time. It was common for many teachers to only have a few major students.

Secondly, those who accuse Zuhri of this accuse hadith like “Journeys are not undertaken except to three mosques: Masjid al-Haram, Masjid al-Nabawi, and Masjid al-Aqsa.” Zuhri narrated this hadith from Saeed ibn al-Musayyab from Abu Hurairah. Orientalists like Goldziher claim the Umayyads asked for this hadith to be fabricated because they wanted to decrease the importance of Makkah and increase the importance of Jerusalem because Abdullah ibn al-Zubair had control of Makkah and they had control of Jerusalem.

It cannot be overstated how farfetched this argument is. This particular accusation can be responded to in several ways:

1. The importance of Masjid al-Aqsa is mentioned in the Quran itself in Surah Isra. No one would need to fabricate a hadith for it.
2. There are several hadith about Masjid al-Aqsa including those narrated in decidedly anti-Umayyad cities like Kufa by clearly non-Umayyad narrators like A’mash. (Sahih Bukhari)
3. Zuhri narrated this hadith from Saeed ibn al-Musayyab who lived at least 2 decades after the Umayyads defeated Ibn al-Zubair (RA) and reestablished control over Makkah. That would mean either that he fabricated a hadith from a living teacher (who would take such a risk?) or, if he fabricated it after Ibn al-Musayyab died, he fabricated it way too late for it to be any use to the Umayyads!

This and other reasons is why more recent scholars entirely reject the idea that Zuhri fabricated this or other ahadith for the Umayyads even if he were alone in narrating that specific hadith.

Josef Horovitz says in The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their Authors after mentioning a similar argument related to the dates of Ibn al-Zubair (RA) and Ibn al-Musayyab’s deaths:

That [Zuhri] himself invented it, as some have implied, is unbelievable. It was not difficulty for the people of Damascus to ascertain whether the hadith was known among the recognized masters in Medina, and any who had doubts would hardly have neglected to institute inquiries.

Whatever one may think about the authenticity of the hadith, there is no ground whatever to doubt but that al-Zuhri really had heard the hadith from the mouth of Saeed ibn al-Musayyab.

The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their Authors, pg. 53-54

Horovitz later says:

That [Zuhri] invented hadith, in order to promote the interests of the Umayyads, is, however, unacceptable.

The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their Authors, pg. 64

There are also several examples of Zuhri narrating anti-Umayyad or pro-Ali hadith.

Example 1

Ma’mar said: I asked Zuhri about [who wrote the treaty of Hudaibiyyah], and he laughed and said, “It was Ali ibn Abi Talib, but if you asked these people”—meaning the Umayyads—”they would say it was Uthman.” (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

In this narration, Zuhri contradicts what the Umayyads would have wanted and instead narrates a pro-Ali view that the writer of Hudaibiyyah was Ali ibn Abi Talib (RA). He also refers to the Umayyads almost derisively.

It is clear that he was not afraid of them or afraid of narrating hadith that contradicted them. Rather, this narration shows he was academically honest even when it went against the Umayyads.

Example 2

Horovitz mentions in his aforementioned book The Earliest Biographies (pg. 57-58) an incident where Zuhri disagreed with the Umayyad Caliph himself. The Caliph Hisham asked Zuhri about the identity of the one who undertook to magnify the slander of Aisha (RA) mentioned in the verse ⟪The one who undertook to magnify it from them will have a great punishment.⟫ (24:11) Zuhri replied that it was Abdullah ibn Ubay, the famous hypocrite. Hisham said, “You’re lying. It was Ali.” But, Zuhri said, “I would never lie even if a voice from the sky said Allah has now allowed lying. I heard Saeed, Urwah, Ubaidullah, and Alqamah all narrate from Aisha that the one who undertook to magnify it was Abdullah ibn Ubay.”

This particular story is reported in Tarikh Dimashq and other books through Shafi’i from his uncle. (Tarikh Dimashq)

The report of Aisha that the identity of this person was actually Abdullah ibn Ubay was itself narrated from Zuhri by Ma’mar and Fulaih.

If Zuhri were dishonest or let the Umayyads influence his hadith, he would not have kept his hadith as it was in the face of opposition by the Umayyad Caliph himself.

Example 3

Zuhri narrated from Ubaidullah ibn Abdullah from Aisha (RA), “When the Prophet (SAW)’s sickness became severe, he sought permission from his wives to stay in my house. They allowed him, so he was helped there by two men with his feet dragging on the ground, Abbas and another man.” Ubaidullah said: I mentioned this to Ibn Abbas and he said, “Do you know who the other man was? It was Ali ibn Abi Talib (RA).” (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

This was narrated by Ma’mar, Yunus, and Uqail from Zuhri.

In this narration, Zuhri could easily have ignored the part about Ali (RA) which is clearly a merit for him. But, he was academically honest and did not let any Umayyad leanings (if they existed) affect the integrity of his narrations. Rather, he reported from his teachers what he heard.

All of this, combined with the general evidence of his honest discussed earlier and the general evidence of his reliability that will be discussed after this, shows that there is no reason to suspect and many reasons to oppose the idea that Zuhri let any Umayyad leanings affect his hadith.

Evidence of Reliability

If Zuhri were dishonest, we would expect a lot of inconsistency in his narrations. Someone who makes up chains or hadith in his memory is bound to forget them easily or make up different ones at different times.

Similarly, if someone were prone to forgetfulness or to raising or connecting ‘imperfect’ chains, we would expect to see a pattern in his hadith of that happening.

However, we find remarkable consistency in Zuhri’s narrations. The inconsistency we do find (in terms of raising and connecting chains) is in the narrations of those identified as weak or questionable by the scholars of hadith.

Types of Differences

We can determine Zuhri’s consistency in transmission by analyzing narrations where multiple students narrated the same hadith from him. If the students tend to match, this shows Zuhri did not arbitrarily choose isnads. The difference between students can be of two kinds:

1. Total Difference: One person narrates a hadith from Zuhri from one route to the Prophet, and another person narrates the hadith from Zuhri from a completely different route to the Prophet.
2. Compatible Difference: One person narrates a hadith connected or raised to the Prophet or someone else, and another person narrates the hadith disconnected or not raised to that person.

The latter is called “compatible” because it is possible for someone to narrate a disconnected or unraised chain for the purpose of brevity.

Of 34 multi-narrated hadith of Zuhri (both musnad and mursal) sampled variously from the books of Abd al-Razzaq, Ibn Wahb, and Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak, there was a “total difference” of isnad in only 1 hadith.

In this one hadith, Ma’mar narrated from Zuhri from Saeed ibn al-Musayyab from Abu Hurairah. Malik and Ibn Uyainah narrated the hadith from Zuhri from Ubaidullah ibn Abdullah from Ibn Abbas from Maimunah. Yunus also narrated the hadith from Zuhri from Ubaidullah. This 1 instance is easily explained as Ma’mar making a mistake. (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

This shows Zuhri was consistent in his narrations. There is no other way for someone careless with chains to maintain such consistency in which chain he uses for which hadith.

Other than this one, there are 8 more narrations (out of the 34) where the major students of Zuhri compatibly differed on a hadith. Almost all of them are resolvable by looking at which narrators supported which position and are more readily explained as mistakes from students or as Zuhri or his students summarizing a chain in some instances.

Did Zuhri fall into easy mistakes?

Example 1

Zuhri narrated from Ibn al-Musayyab that the Prophet (SAW) was asked about a man who doubts in his Salah. The Prophet (SAW) said, “He should not break it until he smells something or hears something.” (Musnad Humaidi)

Ma’mar, Ibn Uyainah, and Muhammad ibn Abi Hafsah narrated this hadith from Zuhri mursal like this. There are weak chains which add Abu Hurairah or Abu Saeed al-Khudri between Ibn al-Musayyab and the Prophet (SAW), but they are dispelled by the narration of Zuhri’s major students and by the known weakness of their narrators. Even the fact that they cannot agree (whether it is Abu Hurairah or Abu Saeed) indicates the original hadith from Zuhri was mursal.

Zuhri narrated this hadith early in his life (Ma’mar) and late in his life (Ibn Uyainah) exactly the same, mursal. If he were dishonest or used to raise isnads forgetfully, he would have added Abu Hurairah to the chain because that was a common chain of hadith in his corpus. In the Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq alone, there are ~30 hadith with the chain of Zuhri from Saeed ibn al-Musayyab from Abu Hurairah.

Ibn Uyainah and Muhammad ibn Abi Hafsah added another chain for this hadith from Zuhri. They said Zuhri narrated it from Ibn al-Musayyab and also from Abbad ibn Tamim from his uncle from the Prophet (SAW).

Someone might argue: This is evidence of Zuhri adding to chains over time. Originally, he just had Ibn al-Musayyab from the Prophet, then he added Abbad ibn Tamim from his uncle from the Prophet! The principle we follow is that if someone does not quote a piece of evidence that would have been useful for him, that means it did not exist at the time.

However, this is a poor argument for several reasons:

1. If Zuhri wished to make his hadith stronger, it would have been much more intuitive to add Abu Hurairah or another Sahabi after Ibn al-Musayyab. Zuhri narrated many hadith from Ibn al-Musayyab from Abu Hurairah from the Prophet (SAW). It does not make sense for him to fabricate an otherwise less famous chain, let alone while keeping the original mursal chain in his narration!
2. We cannot project the thought process of later scholars onto earlier ones. Just because later scholars of hadith prefer the chain of Abbad because it is connected does not mean Zuhri (or Ma’mar or even Abd al-Razzaq) would have as well. Ibn al-Musayyab was a major authority in Madinah, so it is possible Zuhri or Ma’mar considered his mursal narration more important evidence in the subject.
3. It is also possible Abd al-Razzaq or Ma’mar simply did not hear or remember this chain for the hadith.

In fact, Zuhri not ‘fixing’ his chain from Ibn al-Musayyab and needing another source for a connected chain is evidence he did not intentionally ‘fix’ chains.

Example 2

Zuhri narrated from Ubaidullah ibn Abbas from Abu Hurairah that a man urinated in the masjid. People were about to seize him but the Prophet (SAW) told them to leave him and sprinkle water on the urine. He said, “You have been sent to make things easy, not to make things difficult.” (Musnad Humaidi)

This is how Yunus, Ibn Uyainah, and Shuaib narrated the hadith. Yunus was one of the early students of Zuhri, and Shuaib and Ibn Uyainah were later.

As for Ma’mar, Abd al-Razzaq narrated this hadith from Ma’mar from Zuhri without Abu Hurairah in the chain (i.e. mursal). Rabah (also reliable) narrated the hadith from Ma’mar from Zuhri with Abu Hurairah in the chain (i.e. connected). Possibly, Abd al-Razzaq made a mistake.

What supports Rabah’s transmission from Ma’mar is that Abu Hurairah was not Ubaidullah’s common source in Zuhri’s narrations. Usually, Ubaidullah narrated from Ibn Abbas. So, the fact that Rabah said Abu Hurairah instead of Ibn Abbas rules out the possibility he said it forgetfully.

For the same reason (Ibn Abbas rather than Abu Hurairah was Zuhri’s common source for Ubaidullah), the fact that Zuhri narrated it with Abu Hurairah in the chain to several students at different times in his life shows his memory, consistency, and reliability.

If someone were careless with chains or added people arbitrarily, he would fall into the common chain over time, not be stable in an uncommon one.

It is not possible to argue this is an example of Zuhri turning a mursal hadith musnad later in life, because Yunus (who was early) also narrated the hadith with the unusual chain of Abu Hurairah.

Example 3

As mentioned before, Zuhri narrated from Ali ibn Husain Zain ul-Abideen, “The Prophet (SAW) used to do takbeer whenever he went up or down in Salah. This was his Salah until he reached Allah.” (Muwatta Malik)

Malik, Ibn Uyainah, Yunus, and Ibn Sam’an all narrated this hadith from Zuhri with this chain and wording.

Zuhri maintained this chain without raising it for early students (Yunus) and late students (Ibn Uyainah), even though it would have been easy to add a connected chain forgetfully or intentionally.

However, there is something even more perplexing in this narration!

Zuhri narrated from Abu Salamah that Abu Hurairah used to pray in front of them and do takbeer whenever he went up or down in Salah. When he finished prayer, he (Abu Hurairah) used to say, “I showed you how the Prophet (SAW) used to pray.”

This is a connected chain. Malik, Shuaib, Yunus, and Ma’mar all narrated this hadith from Zuhri with this chain and content (some summarized, and some with more details).

Firstly, to propose that Zuhri fabricated these ahadith, you need to explain why he put weakness into both of his narrations on this subject. In the first, the chain is disconnected. In the second, the action is not attributed directly to the Prophet (SAW); instead, it is conveyed through an intermediary (Abu Hurairah) who says after the prayer that his prayer was meant to show how the Prophet prayed. Why not just fabricate that Abu Hurairah said the Prophet used to do takbeer at those times?

Secondly, if Zuhri was not meticulous and precise in his narrations, why and how did he preserve this minor difference between the two narrations even when narrating to multiple students at different times in his life? Wouldn’t a careless narrator mix the two up and attribute the hadith of Ali ibn Husain to Abu Hurairah because it simplifies things?

This shows Zuhri was not only honest, but he was meticulous and precise in distinguishing even similar narrations.

Was Zuhri ‘fixing’ chains?

Some people accuse Zuhri and other narrators of hadith of “fixing” hadith by making mursal hadith musnad or raising non-prophetic hadith to the Prophet (SAW).

However, of the mursal or mawquf narrations sampled from the aforementioned sources (Abd al-Razzaq, Ibn Wahb, and Ibn al-Mubarak), 80% were either narrated as mursal/mawquf by multiple major students of Zuhri or were solitary (I could only find one student narrating it). The other 20% had difference between the students between mursal or musnad or prophetic or non-prophetic. This is well within the range we would expect for mistakes from Zuhri’s students rather than Zuhri himself.

This makes it unlikely Zuhri was fixing chains over his career. If he were doing that, most of his mursal/mawquf narrations would not stay solitary but would be widely reported as musnad by his later students, especially considering the popularity of Zuhri’s musnad hadith.

Of the musnad hadith of Zuhri sampled, there was not a single hadith that was only narrated by one student of Zuhri.

Example 1

Yunus asked Zuhri, “How will we look like on the Day of Judgement?” He said, “It has reached us that they will be resurrected in the height of Adam (AS), and his height was 60 cubits.” (Zuhd of Ibn al-Mubarak)

No one else narrated this hadith from Zuhri. If he ever gave it a connected isnad, it would have become popular, like the other narrations on the subject by other narrators.

Example 2

Yunus narrated from Zuhri without a chain from the Prophet (SAW), “The one whose voice is best in the Quran is the one whom, when you hear him, you know he fears Allah.” (Zuhd of Ibn al-Mubarak)

No one else narrated this hadith from Zuhri. If he ever gave it a connected isnad, it would have become popular. It has been narrated through weak musnad chains from other than Zuhri.

Example 3

Zuhri narrated from Ali ibn Husain from a person of knowledge from the Prophet (SAW), “The earth will be spread on the Day of Judgement like tanned leather…” (Tafsir Abd al-Razzaq)

Ma’mar and Yunus narrated it from Zuhri with this chain that contains an unknown “person of knowledge.”

There is a weak chain through Ibrahim ibn Saad from Zuhri that says Ali ibn Husain narrated it from Jabir from the Prophet. However, clearly, Zuhri did not say this chain because it only comes from a weak narrator from Ibrahim ibn Saad. If Ibrahim ibn Saad actually narrated it musnad, it would have become famous in the collections of hadith.

If Zuhri had “fixed” the chain to “Ali ibn Husain from Jabir from the Prophet (SAW),” which would have been easy for him, the hadith would have become popular. But, this hadith is not recorded through any other students of Zuhri.

All of this shows Zuhri was not at all in the habit of “fixing” hadith.

How did Zuhri treat long reports?

We find several examples in Zuhri’s hadith corpus of him narrating long hadith about events in the life of the Prophet (SAW). The precision with which Zuhri deals with these narrations dispels any notion that we should doubt his reliability in the chains and content he provides for hadith.

Example 1

Zuhri narrated a long hadith about the hijrah. (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

This hadith was narrated in full form by Ma’mar and shorter forms by Yunus and Uqail.

In this hadith, Zuhri first narrated a portion of the story from Urwah.

Then, he said a portion of the story himself without chain.

Then, he narrated a portion of the story from Urwah from Aisha.

Then, he narrated a portion of the story from Abd al-Rahman ibn Malik from his father from (his brother) Suraqah.

Then, he narrated a portion of the story from Urwah.

What unreliable narrator would do such a thing? How can anyone doubt the narrations of Zuhri (or doubt the chain he gave) after this? Zuhri was clearly an exceptionally precise and honest narrator.

Example 2

Zuhri narrated a long hadith about the final days of the Prophet (SAW). (Musannaf Abd al-Razzaq)

This hadith was narrated in full form by Ma’mar and parts of it were narrated by Shuaib and others.

In this hadith, Zuhri first narrated a portion of the story from Abu Bakr ibn Abd al-Rahman from Asma bint Umais.

Then, he narrated a portion of the story from Ubaidullah ibn Abdullah from Aisha (RA).

Then, he narrated a portion of the story from Urwah or or Amrah (expressing doubt!) from Aisha (RA).

Then, he narrated a portion from Abd al-Rahman ibn Ka’b from a man among the companions (without identifying him!).

Then, he narrated a portion from “a man” (without identifying him!).

Then, he narrated a portion from Ubaidullah ibn Utbah from Aisha and Ibn Abbas.

Then, he said a portion himself without chain.

Then, he narrated a portion from Abdullah ibn Umar (not the companion, another narrator) from Aisha (RA).

Then, he narrated a portion from Anas ibn Malik.

How can anyone doubt Zuhri’s precision and reliability in chains after this? To deny Zuhri’s hadith after these examples would not be rational or reasonable.

Zuhri was clearly precise, meticulous, and honest when narrating hadith.

Hadith of First Revelation and its Criticism

The hadith of first revelation in the cave of Hira is narrated by Zuhri from Urwah from Aisha (RA). It is reported by several students of Zuhri including Ma’mar, Uqail, and Yunus in complete form. Parts of it are also reported by other students of Zuhri.

The hadith is considered strongly sahih by the traditional standards of hadith. As a result, it is included in both Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

The chain is made of three people: Zuhri, Urwah ibn al-Zubair, and Aisha (RA).

As for Zuhri, we went through his integrity and reliability in detail. As for Urwah ibn al-Zubair, he was a major scholar of Madinah in the generation before Zuhri, and he was a nephew of Aisha (RA). He was also known to collect and speak about the biography of the Prophet (SAW). Aisha (RA) was the Prophet (SAW)’s wife. She lived with him for the last 10 years of his life.

Schoeler in his Biography of Muhammad (SAW) analyzes the hadith of first revelation using the historical-critical method and isnad-cum-matn analysis.

He comes to four conclusions:

1. Urwah did not narrate the hadith from Aisha (RA). Zuhri was wrong in claiming this.
2. The story of first revelation actually comes from Ubaid ibn Umair.
3. The story of the Prophet (SAW) going to the top of a mountain to throw himself off reliably traces back to Urwah
4. Zuhri fabricated a narration from Abu Salamah about the Prophet seeing Jibril in the sky.

Let us go through and analyze these four conclusions.

Response to Conclusion 1

The first conclusion is based on narrations that indicate Hisham narrated the hadith of first revelation from Urwah without mentioning Aisha (RA).

There are two narrations from Hisham in this regard.

First: Affan ibn Muslim > Hammad ibn Salamah > Hisham ibn Urwah > Urwah: The Prophet (SAW) said, “Khadijah, I see a light and hear a sound. I am afraid I am becoming a kāhin (soothsayer).” She responded, “Allah will never do that with you Ibn Abdullah. You speak truthfully and fulfill trusts and join ties of kinship.” (Tabaqat Ibn Saad)

Schoeler argues that although this only includes one event from the longer hadith of Zuhri, this must be part of a longer narration narrated by Hisham, perhaps summarized by someone after him.

Second: Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi al-Zinad > Hisham ibn Urwah > Urwah: Khadijah bint Khuwailid used to go to Waraqah with what the Prophet (SAW) told her happened to him and Waraqah would say, “By Allah, if it is as you say, the great Namus is coming to him, the Namus of Isa (AS), the one whom Ahl al-Kitab won’t talk about without payment. If he speaks while I am alive, I will struggle for the sake of Allah with him.”

Schoeler argues the same for this hadith.

The first thing to note is that both of these narrations are questionable from the perspective of authenticity.

As for the second, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi al-Zinad was considered a very weak narrator by the scholars of hadith.

As for the first, Hammad ibn Salamah (although generally reliable) was not known to be reliable from Hisham ibn Urwah. In fact, a narration of Abu Dawud even seems to indicate there is an intermediary between them (Sunan Abu Dawud). He also makes clear mistakes in some narrations.

In one narration, Hammad narrated from Hisham a hadith about a woman asking whether she can donate on behalf of her late mother (Sunan Abu Dawud). However, Malik and other reliable students of Hisham narrated this hadith about a man rather than a woman (Sahih Bukhari).

That being said, the conclusion that 1) Hisham ibn Urwah probably narrated something on this topic from his father Urwah, and 2) Hisham probably did not mention Aisha (RA) is correct. 1 is true because the two (Hammad and Abd al-Rahman) support each other to prove at least the existence of some narration. 2 is true because the hadith would have been widely transmitted had Hisham narrated it with a connected chain. That indicates, if the hadith existed from Hisham, it must have been disconnected.

However, does Hisham narrating the story from Urwah without mentioning Aisha indicate Urwah probably did not mention Aisha?

The answer is no.

Firstly, in both narrations, it appears that Hisham did not narrate this hadith fully and the story appears to be garbled. Part of this might be blamed on the narrators below Hisham. However, it appears unlikely that Hisham narrated a full hadith about the first revelation from Urwah and it would not be widely disseminated, especially considering Zuhri’s narration was famous. Even its value when comparing it to Zuhri’s narration would have led to its dissemination. As a result, it is likely Hisham himself only narrated this hadith in summarized portions, which indicates he did not remember or receive the hadith in full form. That can explain why he did not remember or include Aisha (RA) in the chain.

Schoeler argues that Ibn Saad himself may be responsible for summarizing the hadith of Hammad ibn Salamah from Hisham. This is unlikely considering Ibn Saad quotes longer narrations with more complete stories before and after the narration of Hisham. (See Tabaqat Ibn Saad) Why summarize this but not those? In fact, the narration after Hisham’s hadith also comes from the same Hammad ibn Salamah but is more complete than his narration from Hisham. So, it is unlikely even Hammad was responsible for the summary! It is most likely the summary was by Hisham himself.

Secondly, we have seen Zuhri’s accuracy and care in his narrations. He was not prone to raising or connecting his chains. He was extremely precise in giving chains to his narrations. Thus, if Zuhri mentioned Aisha (RA), as transmitted by several students from him, we should believe him that the narration came from Aisha (RA). If it did not come from Aisha (RA), Zuhri was certainly not shy to say that clearly as we have demonstrated.

Thirdly, even if Hisham ibn Urwah genuinely narrated from Urwah ibn al-Zubair without mentioning Aisha (RA), that does not entail we should reject Zuhri’s narration of the hadith with Aisha (RA) in the chain.

In the time of Urwah, hadith were not taught in classes with precise chains always being mentioned. So, there is no expectation that Urwah would always mention his source when telling the story. It is easily possible Hisham heard the story from his father without the source while Zuhri received the name of the source.

To his credit, Schoeler prefers to say Zuhri mistook Aisha in the isnad because it was such a common chain rather than intentionally fabricated it.

However, since we have seen Zuhri was not prone to randomly raising or connecting chains, we should not expect that from him. The easier explanation is just that Hisham did not know the source.

This is shown even by an example this article already covered where the roles were reversed. Zuhri narrated from Urwah that some Jews did magic on the Prophet (SAW), while Hisham narrated it from Urwah from Aisha (RA) with a full chain.

It is simply not expected in the early period for isnads to always be discussed, hence one person not mentioning the full chain does not show a problem in a hadith if a strongly reliable narrator narrates it with its chain.

Response to Conclusion 2

The second conclusion (that the hadith originally comes from Ubaid ibn Umair) is based on a narration by Ibn Ishaq.

Ibn Ishaq > Wahb ibn Kaisan: I heard Abdullah ibn al-Zubair say to Ubaid ibn Umair, “Narrate to us, O Ubaid, how revelation began to the Prophet (SAW) when Jibril came to him.” Ubaid said, while I was present, in the court of Abdullah ibn al-Zubair, “The Prophet (SAW) used to go to Hira…”

The hadith is long and with elaborate details compared to the hadith of Urwah ibn al-Zubair but covers the same events in roughly the same order. There is some resemblance between the two stories.

Schoeler argues this hadith cannot have been fabricated from the hadith of Urwah ibn al-Zubair, because why would anyone fabricate this (non-famous and disconnected) isnad instead of directly mentioning Aisha (RA) or Urwah (RA) as the authority of the hadith.

Instead, he argues that this story which was narrated in the court of Abdullah ibn al-Zubair was probably heard by other members of the Zubairid family. Then, Urwah ibn al-Zubair probably got the hadith from them (or perhaps he was there when the story was recited in the first place).

We would agree this hadith is unlikely to be fabricated from the hadith of Urwah because all its narrators are honest and reliable (even if not to the level of Zuhri or Hisham).

However, the hadith relies on Ibn Ishaq, and Ibn Ishaq, although honest, was known to mix up narrations with each other. It is not out of the realm of possibility he is the one who introduced many of the finer elements of similarity between Urwah and Ubaid ibn Umar’s hadith. Ibn Ishaq was a student of Zuhri and narrated at least parts of the hadith of first revelation from Zuhri from Urwah from Aisha in his Seerah, so there is no doubt he knew the hadith.

There are many examples of Ibn Ishaq adding details to or mixing narrations with others (compare this narration of Ibn Ishaq to this narration of Malik for the same hadith).

Even if we conceded the narration and its content traces reliably back to Ubaid ibn Umair, it does not make sense to claim Urwah received this hadith from Ubaid ibn Umair when it is easily possible both came from a common source.

Firstly, Ubaid ibn Umair did narrate a number of hadith from Aisha, so it is not inconceivable he learned the story from her.

Secondly, it is also not inconceivable this story of the first revelation was well-known by many companions and Ubaid received it from another companion who knew it.

The narration of Ibn Ishaq implies the story was well-known. Abdullah ibn Zubair’s prompt asking Ubaid to narrate the story indicates he already knew the gist of the story. He may have been asking Ubaid to tell the story for the audience because Ubaid was a good storyteller.

The fact that Ubaid was a good speaker is also known from other sources. Awwam ibn Hawshab said, “Ibn Umar was seen in the circle of Ubaid ibn Umair, and he was crying the most out of everyone, to the point the ground became wet with his tears.” (Ibn Abi al-Dunya)

Thirdly, Ubaid not mentioning his source or chain is not evidence that he composed the story himself. The context is that he was asked to tell a story. He was not asked to narrate a hadith with a chain, and as mentioned before, it was common practice at the time to narrate stories without chain even if you had one.

As a result, there is no evidence in this narration of Ubaid to show Urwah’s hadith was derivative or did not come from Aisha (RA) as the reliable Zuhri narrates.

Response to Conclusion 3

Zuhri narrated the story of first revelation from Urwah from Aisha with the following content:

1. The first thing the Prophet (SAW) started experiencing was true dreams
2. He started going to the cave of Hira for solitude
3. An angel came to him in Hira and said “Read.” He said, “I can’t read.” The angel hugged him tightly. This happened three times.
4. The angel gave him the first verses of Surah Alaq
5. The Prophet (SAW) returned to Khadijah and told her what happened
6. Khadijah (RA) reminded him of his good character and said, “Allah will never disgrace you.”
7. Khadijah took the Prophet (SAW) to Waraqah who had converted to Christianity in the past.
8. Waraqah heard the story and identified the angel as Namus (Jibril) and predicted the Prophet would be expelled by his people. He said he would help the Prophet if he lived any longer.
9. Then, revelation stopped for some time and the Prophet (SAW) became distressed.

In the narration of Ma’mar (but not Uqail and Yunus), Zuhri continues:

… The revelation stopped and the Prophet (SAW) became distressed, according to what reached us, with such distress that he sometimes went to the tops of mountains wanting to throw himself off before Jibril appeared and said, “O Muhammad, you are truly the Messenger of Allah.” Then, he would calm down and return. Then, again, when the fatrah (the pause of revelation) seemed long, he would do the same and go to the mountain and Jibril would appear and say the same.

This story about the Prophet (SAW) going to the mountains is also found in the hadith of Ubaid ibn Umair, however, Ubaid’s narration places it right after Surah Alaq was revealed. That does not make sense with the story. Why would the Prophet (SAW) become distressed enough to throw himself off the mountain without even going back home first?

Zuhri only narrated the story of mountains with the phrase “according to what reached us” (بَلَغَنَا in Arabic) indicating he did not get this part of the story from Urwah ibn al-Zubair. The phrase “according to what reached us” is a common refrain used by Zuhri and other later narrators of hadith. It would be anachronistic to attribute it to Urwah ibn al-Zubair, let alone Aisha (RA).

Here are a few examples of Zuhri using the phrase: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Zuhri would often use this phrase to add more information to a narration that he did not receive from the given chain. If he were dishonest or imprecise, he could have added details to narrations without specifying that he got them from another source. However, Zuhri was clearly neither dishonest nor imprecise. This should increase our trust in this narration of Zuhri.

The fact that Uqail and Yunus do not have this part of the narration indicates they recognized this part was mursal and did not wish to include it.

Schoeler proposes that since (he himself concluded) Urwah received his narration from Ubaid (directly or indirectly) and Ubaid’s narration contains the story of the mountains, it stands to reason that the story of mountains is also from Urwah in Zuhri’s narration.

Either Schoeler did not notice Zuhri saying “according to what reached us” or thinks it does not matter what Zuhri says. Perhaps he could argue Zuhri just added that because he found that part of the hadith distasteful. However, then, why include it in the first place?

Rather, the obvious conclusion is that Zuhri heard of this story separate from the hadith he narrated from Urwah from Aisha.

All of this is to show there is no reason to doubt Zuhri’s narration from Urwah from Aisha and also no reason to doubt his explicit statement that the story of the mountains is something he “received,” not from this chain.

Ubaid’s narration combines the story of the mountains with the story of the angel in the sky and places it right after the revelation of Surah Alaq inside Hira. This appears to be clearly confused. The confusion probably came from one of Ibn Ishaq, Wahb ibn Kaisan, or Ubaid combining the elements of the story that involve a mountain encounter with an angel into one place.

Response to Conclusion 4

In the narrations of Ma’mar, Uqail, and Yunus, Zuhri continues:

Abu Salamah narrated from Jabir ibn Abdullah from the Prophet who said, while talking about the fatrah of revelation:

While I was walking, I heard a sound from the sky. When I lifted my eyes, there I saw the angel who came to me in Hira sitting on a throne between the sky and earth. I became terrified and returned home and said, “Cover me! Cover me!” So, Allah revealed, ⟪O covered one, stand and warn…⟫

Zuhri narrated this hadith in summarized form, but Yahya ibn Abi Katheer narrated this hadith from Abu Salamah and added that it happened near the cave of Hira.

Yahya ibn Abi Katheer: I asked Abu Salamah, “What verse was revealed first?” He said, “⟪O covered one⟫.” I said, “I heard the first verses to be revealed were ⟪Read in the name of your Lord who created⟫?” Abu Salamah said, “I asked Jabir ibn Abdullah which verse was revealed first.”

Yahya > Abu Salamah > Jabir: I will tell you nothing but what I heard from the Prophet (SAW). He said, “I stayed in Hira. When my stay ended, I left. When I descended the valley, someone called me. I looked ahead, to the right, to the left, and to the back, but I did not see anything. Then, I lifted my head, and there he was on a throne between the sky and earth! I became terrified of him and returned to my family and said, ‘Cover me! Cover me!’ Then, Allah revealed ⟪O covered one…⟫.”

Juynboll advanced the theory that Zuhri heard that Yahya opposed him in what revelation was first, so he copied Yahya’s narration to compete with him and to fit the narration into his own narrative by making it so it was about the fatrah and not the true first revelation! Juynboll termed this the ‘fatrah trick’ and Schoeler concurs something like this happened.

The evidence provided for Zuhri’s honesty and integrity is enough to dispel this absolutely ridiculous theory.

Zuhri did presumably try to harmonize between the two narrations, as any Muslim trying to understand what happened in reality would, but to claim he fabricated his narration from Abu Salamah is ridiculous. What Zuhri possibly did was add the comment “while talking about the fatrah of revelation” to indicate his proposed harmonization of Jabir’s narration with Aisha’s.

There is also no indication that Yahya (or Abu Salamah or Jabir) disagreed with the story of the angel meeting the Prophet in Hira. The disagreement appears to be over whether the verses of Surah Alaq were revealed then. This is indicated by the fact that Yahya’s narration from Jabir seems to assume Jibril (AS) was already known by the Prophet (SAW). He says, “Then, I lifted my head, and there he was” with no explanation of who “he” was. Likely, this was part of a longer narrative including a version of the story of Hira. As for “the angel who came to me in Hira” in Zuhri’s narration, it is unclear whether it comes from Abu Salamah or whether it is Zuhri elaborating on the “he” to explain what the hadith means.

It is not impossible that Jabir only heard directly from the Prophet (SAW) about the revelation of Surah Mudathir and did not know Surah Alaq was revealed in Hira.

Another evidence Schoeler mentions is that Nu’man ibn Rashid narrated the hadith of first revelation from Zuhri and mentioned the story of the mountains and placed it right before the revelation of Surah Alaq. Schoeler proposes this may have been Zuhri’s early narration before he changed it for the ‘fatrah trick’. He also uses this as evidence the narration originally comes from Ubaid ibn Umair, because Ubaid ibn Umair placed the story of the mountains right after the revelation of Surah Alaq. So, both agree on placing it close to the revelation.

However, Nu’man ibn Rashid was known to be quite weak in memory. Bukhari said, “His hadith have a lot of mistakes, but he is honest.” (Tarikh Bukhari)

There are more examples than you can count of Nu’man ibn Rashid mixing up narrations or the order of things within narrations. When this is the case, which is more likely: Nu’man ibn Rashid mixed up Zuhri’s hadith with the hadith of Ubaid ibn Umair (or another similar story) or mixed up the order of Zuhri’s hadith or that Nu’man recorded the only ‘original’ version of Zuhri’s hadith that his fellow students all missed?

This is especially farfetched considering Ma’mar, Yunus, and Uqail were of a similar generation to Nu’man, so it is unclear why only he preserved the ‘original’ version.

Also, considering how famous Zuhri was, how did people miss that he used to edit and reorder his hadith? The conclusion is farfetched and requires a level of ignorance, incompetence, or conspiracy among the audience of Zuhri that is hard to believe.

Conclusion

In this article, we showed how the judgement of the hadith scholars about the narrator Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri turns out to be accurate even if we analyze his narrations manually today.

First, we showed Zuhri’s integrity and honesty through a variety of means and examples. Second, we showed Zuhri’s accuracy and precision through a variety of means and examples. Finally, we responded to one accusation of a mistake against Zuhri by the Western academics.

This article does not mean to encourage the idea that we need to manually check the reliability of scholars that are known to be reliable. In reality, the reliability of Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri is as bright as the sun to anyone who regards the hadith tradition with its due respect. However, this manual way of showing reliability is like a candle for someone stuck in a cave so that it helps lead him out to the sunlight.

The hadith scholars had far more access to Zuhri’s hadith corpus and applied a similar method, if not something more rigorous, in addition to using other information they had access to when they came to their conclusion about Zuhri.

Ma’mar said, “I have never seen anyone else like Zuhri in his subject (hadith).” (Ibn Abi Hatim)