, his cloak trailing behind him, and kissed him on the face.
Umm Qirfah had equipped forty mounted fighters—her sons and grandsons—to march against the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. The Prophet therefore dispatched Zayd against them; he killed them and killed her, and he sent her coat of mail to the Prophet ﷺ, who set it up in Madinah between two spears ⦗1⦘.
This report was transmitted by al-Muhamili, from ʿAbd Allah ibn Shabib ⦗2⦘, on his authority.
Al-Tirmidhi ⦗3⦘ also narrated part of it—from al-Bukhari, through this same Ibrahim—and graded it ḥasan (sound).
Mujalid narrated—from al-Shaʿbi, from ʿAishah—who said:
“Had Zayd been alive, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ would have appointed him as his successor.”
Waʾil ibn Dawud reported—from al-Bahiy, from ʿAishah:
“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ never sent Zayd with an army without placing him in command of it; and had he survived after him, he would have made him his successor ⦗4⦘.”
This was recorded by al-Nasaʾi.
Ibn ʿUmar said: “ʿUmar assigned Usamah ibn Zayd a stipend larger than the one he allotted me, so I spoke to him about it…"
(1) The chain is weak because both Ibrahim ibn Yahya and his father are unreliable, and because Ibn Ishaq transmits it with an indistinct “on the authority of” (-an‘ana). It is listed by al-Muttaqi al-Hindi in Kanz al-Ummal, no. 30260.
(2) The narrator is the hadith scholar Abu Said Abd Allah ibn Shabib al-Raba‘i al-Madani, an akhbari who, despite his weakness, preserved an impressive amount of material. The author profiles him in Tadhkirat al-Huffaz, p. 613; the printed edition mistakenly reads “Shaqiq” in place of “Shabib.”
(3) See al-Tirmidhi, hadith no. 2732.
(4) Reported by Ahmad 6/226, 227, 254, 218; Ibn Saad, al-Tabaqat 3/1/31; and Abu Bakr Ibn Abi Shaybah as quoted in Usd al-Ghabah 2/283, all through the chain: Muhammad ibn Ubayd al-Tanafisi – Wail ibn Dawud – al-Bahi – Aishah. This isnad is sound. Al-Bahi is Abd Allah, the freedman of Musab ibn al-Zubayr. Al-Hakim 3/215 also narrated it through Sahl ibn Ammar al-Ataki from Muhammad ibn Ubayd and declared it authentic, but al-Dhahabi retorted: “Sahl, whom al-Hakim himself labeled a liar in his Tarikh, is now accepted—where is integrity?” Al-Dhahabi did not grade the hadith sound through any other route, even though three reliable scholars transmitted it from Muhammad ibn Ubayd; he may simply not have recalled that fact.