Isḥāq ibn al-Ṭabbāʿ said: “I asked Mālik, ‘Has it reached you that Ibn ʿUmar said to Nāfiʿ, “Do not lie about me as Ikrimah lied about ʿAbd Allāh”?’ He replied, ‘No. What has reached me is that Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab said those words to his client Burd.’ ” I said, “That version is more convincing, for Ikrimah was not even mentioned in the days of Ibn ʿUmar and had not yet taken up the task of narration.”
Jarīr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd transmitted from Yazīd ibn Abī Ziyād, who said: “I entered upon ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās while Ikrimah was shackled at the door of the privy. I asked, ‘Why is this man being treated like that?’ He answered, ‘He fabricates against my father.’ ⦗1⦘”
Hishām ibn Saʿd related from ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurasānī: “I said to Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, ‘Ikrimah claims that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ married Maymūnah while he was in a state of iḥrām (ritual consecration).’ ⦗2⦘ He replied, ‘Those two scoundrels have lied! ⦗3⦘ Go to him and revile him. I shall explain: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ arrived while he was consecrated; when he came out of iḥrām, he married her.’ ”
And Shuʿbah narrated from ʿAmr ibn Murrah: “A man once asked Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab about a verse…”
= It is likewise transmitted by Abd Allah al-Sunabihi in Ahmad, 5/217; by Abu Dawud (425); and by Abu Idris al-Khawlani in al-Tayalisi’s Musnad (78). Hence the hadith is sound, and Ibn Hibban (252) and others have declared it sahih.
(1) Yazid b. Abi Ziyad is weak and his reports are not accepted; therefore the narration is not authentic. Al-hush means a garden or orchard.
(2) Ikrima has been wrongly blamed on this point, for many chains from Ibn Abbas report that the Prophet married her while in ihram (state of consecration). This, however, is counted among Ibn Abbas’s errors: it is soundly narrated from Yazid b. al-Asam (Maymuna’s nephew), from Maymuna, that the Messenger of Allah married her when he was not in ihram, consummated the marriage while not in ihram, and that she died at Sarif; related by al-Tirmidhi (854), Muslim (1411), Abu Dawud (1843) and Ibn Majah (1964). Sulayman b. Yasar also transmits from Abu Rafiʿ: “The Prophet married Maymuna while not in ihram, consummated the marriage while not in ihram, and I served as the envoy between them,” recorded by Ahmad, 6/293, and al-Tirmidhi (841), who graded it hasan. Malik likewise reports in the Muwatta, 1/348, a mursal tradition from Sulayman b. Yasar, Maymuna’s freedman, that the Messenger of Allah sent Abu Rafiʿ, his freedman, together with a man from the Ansar, and they contracted his marriage to Maymuna while the Prophet was still in Madinah before setting out.
(3) Lisan al-Arab states that the term means “vile, wicked” and applies to both men and women; the form suggests an intensified meaning.