even with an ill-favoured bondwoman.
I say: He—may Allah have mercy on him—spoke the truth, for the hadith states, “Beware! No man should ever be alone with a woman, for the third of them is Satan.” (1)
ʿAffān relates from Ḥammād ibn Salamah who said: “I arrived in Mecca while ʿAṭāʾ was still alive, so I said, ‘After I break my fast I will go in to see him.’ Yet he died during that very Ramadan.”
Ibn Abī Laylā used to visit him. ʿUmārah ibn Maymūn once said to me, “Stay close to Qays ibn Saʿd, for he has a deeper grasp of jurisprudence than ʿAṭāʾ.”
Al-Haytham, Abū al-Malīḥ al-Raqqī, Aḥmad, Abū ʿUmar al-Ḍarīr, and others said that ʿAṭāʾ died in the year 114 AH.
Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān said: in 114 or 115 AH.
Ibn Jurayj, Ibn ʿUyaynah, al-Wāqidī, Abū Nuʿaym, and al-Fallās said: in 115 AH.
Al-Wāqidī added: he lived to be eighty-eight years old.
Shabāb said: he died in 117 AH—yet this is an error, and Ibn Jurayj and Ibn ʿUyaynah are more knowledgeable on the matter.
Among the leading Successors who were in Mecca alongside ʿAṭāʾ were: Mujāhid, Ṭāwūs, ʿUbayd ibn ʿUmayr al-Laythī, Ibn Abī Mulaykah, ʿAmr ibn Dīnār, Abū al-Zubayr al-Makkī, and others.
30 – Ibn Abī Mulaykah, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUbayd Allah * (ʿ)
— the son of Abū Mulaykah, Zuhayr ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn
(1) A portion of an authentic hadith recorded by Ahmad, 1/18, and by al-Tirmidhi (no. 2166) in the Book of Tribulations, chapter “On adhering to the community,” transmitted through Muhammad ibn Suqah, from Abd Allah ibn Dinar, from Ibn Umar. He relates: “Umar addressed us at al-Jabiyah and said: ‘People, I am standing among you as the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, once stood among us, and he said: “I charge you to look after my Companions, then those who come after them, then those who come after them. After that, lying will spread so widely that a man will swear an oath without being asked, and a witness will testify without being called. Beware: no man should be alone with a woman, for the third present will be the devil. Hold fast to the jamaʿah (the communal body) and avoid division, for the devil is with the solitary person and is farther away from two. Whoever longs for the heart of Paradise should keep to the jamaʿah. Whoever is pleased by his good deed and grieved by his bad deed—that is the believer.”’ ” The chain of transmission is sound; al-Hakim, 1/113 and 1/115, declared it authentic, and the author agreed with him in his Mukhtasar.
(*) Ibn Saʿd, Tabaqat, 5/473; Khalifah, Tabaqat, p. 257; al-Bukhari, Tarikh, 5/137; al-Tarikh al-Saghir, 1/283; Ibn Abi Hatim, al-Jarh wa-l-Taʿdil, 5/99; al-Mizzi, Tahdhib al-Kamal, p. 708; Ibn Hajar, Tadhhib al-Tahdhib, 2/146/1.