of its Lord.”
He (Ibn ʿUmar) said: It occurred to me that the tree was the date-palm, but the people remained silent.
The Prophet ﷺ then said, “It is the date-palm.”
I told my father, and he said, “Had you spoken up, it would have been dearer to me than such-and-such.”
I replied, “You were sitting there, and Abu Bakr was present too, yet neither of you said anything, so I hesitated to speak.”(1)
41 – Abū Shihāb al-Hannāṭ, ʿAbd Rabbih ibn Nāfiʿ * (Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī)
The hadith scholar.
His full name is ʿAbd Rabbih ibn Nāfiʿ al-Kūfī, later al-Madāʾinī.
He narrated from: al-ʿAlāʾ ibn al-Musayyab, al-Aʿmash, Sulaymān ibn Shaybānī, Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd, Muḥammad ibn Sūqah, Ibn Abī Laylā, ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal, Khālid al-Ḥaddāʾ, Ibn Abī Khālid, and several others.
Transmitters from him include: Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr, Saʿdawayh,(2) Aḥmad ibn Yūnus, Khalaf ibn Hishām, Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Warkānī, and others.
Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn judged him reliable.
Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān said, “He was not strong in memorization.”
Others said, “He was truthful, pious, and virtuous.”
(1) The chain of transmission is sound. Al-Bukhari also records it, 1/133–134, in the Book of Knowledge, chapter "When the hadith scholar says: haddathana (he narrated to us) and akhbarana (he informed us)"; 1/151, chapter "Understanding in Knowledge"; and 1/202, chapter "Modesty in Knowledge." Muslim transmits it under no. 2811 in the Book on the Traits of the Hypocrites, chapter "The believer is like the date-palm," through several routes from Ibn Umar.
In the base manuscript, after the phrase "so I disliked to say," appears the remark: "Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi al-Zinad is inserted here." His biography has already been given on p. 168.
(*) Biographical sources: Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra 6/391; al-Fasawi, al-Ma'rifa wa-l-Tarikh 2/170; al-Mizzi, Tahdhib al-Kamal 7/72; al-Dhahabi, al-Ibar 1/260; al-Dhahabi, Tadhhib al-Tahdhib 2/202; al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad 11/128; Ibn Hajar, Tahdhib al-Tahdhib 6/128; Ibn Hajar, Khulasa Tadhhib al-Kamal 223.
(2) He is Sa'id ibn Sulayman al-Dabbi, Abu Uthman al-Wasiti al-Dabbi, a reliable memoriser of hadith; his sobriquet was Sa'dawayh.