Al-Bukhārī said: “Some eight hundred—or even more—reported hadith from him.”
Others state that his arrival and acceptance of Islam took place at the very beginning of the seventh year AH, the year of Khaybar.
Al-Wāqidī added: “He used to reside at Dhū al-Ḥulayfah and owned a house there. He gave that house in charity to his freedmen, who later sold it to ʿAmr ibn Mirbaʿ (1).”
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Lubaynah (2) said: “I saw Abū Hurayrah—he was a dark-complexioned man, broad-shouldered, with a gap between his two front teeth and wearing two braids.”
Ibn Sīrīn said: “Abū Hurayrah was fair-skinned, gentle in manner, and his beard was reddish.”
He also related hadith in Damascus. Thus Muḥammad ibn Kathīr transmitted—from al-Awzāʿī, from Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUbayd Allāh, from Karīmah bint al-Ḥasḥās—who said:
“I heard Abū Hurayrah, in the house of Umm al-Dardāʾ, say, ‘Three practices are acts of disbelief: nīyāḥah (wailing over the dead), tearing one’s garment, and casting aspersions on lineage.’” (3)
(1) Ibn ʿAsakir, Tarikh Dimashq, vol. 19, p. 108, l. 2.
(2) The correct reading is Lubina with the letter n: it refers to ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Nafiʿ b. Lubina, listed in Ibn Abi Hatim, al-Jarh wa l-Taʿdil, 5:294, where the name is misprinted as “Lubina.”
(3) The report also appears in Ibn ʿAsakir, Tarikh Dimashq, 19:105/2. The transmitter Muhammad b. Kathir al-Sanʿani is prone to error, while the remaining narrators are reliable. Muslim cites it in his Sahih (no. 67, Book of Faith, chapter on applying the term kufr [disbelief] to reviling ancestry and wailing) with the wording: “Two practices among people are acts of kufr: defaming ancestry and wailing over the dead.” Wailing (niyaha) is to raise one’s voice in lament; lamentation (nadb) means listing the virtues of the deceased with cries such as “O my shelter, O my mountain.” It is forbidden even if unaccompanied by weeping. Al-Bukhari (3:123, Book of Funerals) and Muslim (no. 103, Book of Faith) transmit from Ibn Masʿud: “He is not one of us who slaps the cheeks, tears the garments, and calls with the cry of jahiliyya (the pre-Islamic era).” Muslim also relates (no. 934) from Abu Malik al-Ashʿari: “Four practices in my community stem from jahiliyya and they will not abandon them: boasting of ancestry, disparaging lineages, seeking rain by the stars, and wailing.”