until he said to him, “In this isnād there is a transmitter whose narration is of no consequence and upon whom no reliance is placed—Qays ibn Abī Ḥāzim, a Bedouin who used to urinate on the backs of his feet.”
Ibn Abī Dāwūd thereupon kissed ʿAlī and embraced him.
The next morning, when the court re-assembled, Ibn Abī Dāwūd said, “Commander of the Faithful, he adduces the ḥadith of Jarīr as proof for the Vision, yet the only one who transmits it from Jarīr is Qays— that Bedouin who urinated on his heels!”
Aḥmad later remarked, “When he confronted me with this objection I realized it was the handiwork of ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī; this and the like were among the main factors that led to the flogging.”
Al-Marzubānī related the story, saying: “Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā—meaning al-Ṣūlī—told me; al-Ḥusayn narrated it to us.”
Al-Khaṭīb then said: “As for what is attributed here to ʿAlī—that one is not to act upon what Qays narrates—this is baseless. Allah has preserved ʿAlī from uttering such a statement, for the scholars of transmission, ʿAlī among them, are unanimous in using the reports of Qays as evidence and in judging them sound, since he was one of the senior Successors of Kūfa.
“Among the Successors there is no one besides Qays who met the Ten Promised Paradise and transmitted from them, in addition to his reports from a multitude of other Companions …” until he said:
“If this report really goes back to Ibn Fahm, I suspect that it was Ibn Abī Dāwūd who disparaged Qays in the manner mentioned and then attributed it to Ibn al-Madīnī—and Allah knows best.”
I say: If the story is authentic, then perhaps ʿAlī merely repeated what he had heard from Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān, who said, “His ḥadith is munkar (deniable).”
He then enumerated several narrations he found objectionable, yet the criticism proved groundless, for they are in fact established. Given the breadth of what Qays transmitted, an occasional solitary report cannot be faulted. Among his transmissions is the ḥadith of the dogs of Ḥawʾab (1). Indeed, Qays all but counted as a Companion: he embraced Islam during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, then