Through this same chain, Abū Khalīfa narrated to us; he said: ʿUthmān ibn al-Haytham narrated to us; ʿAwf narrated to us, from Shahr ibn Ḥawshab, from Abū Hurayrah, who said:
The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “If knowledge were suspended near the Pleiades, men from the sons of Persia would surely reach it.”
3 – ʿAbdūs ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Mālik al-Naysābūrī
He was the eminent ḥadīth master, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Mālik al-Naysābūrī, a resident of Samarkand. I can scarcely call him to mind, yet Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ghunjar mentions him in his History and reports that he heard ḥadīth from Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā, Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd, Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abī al-Shawārib, ʿAmr ibn Zurārah, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Fallās, and others of their rank.
Among those who transmitted from him were: Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Naṣr al-Marwazī, ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn Bujayr, Sahl ibn Shādhwayh, and others.
= Muslim, no. 1622 (Book of Gifts, ch. 7: “The prohibition of taking back a charity or gift after it has been received”), reported through two chains from Muhammad b. Jaʿfar, from Shuʿba, with the same wording.
See also: Bukhari 5/160 (Book of Gifts, “A man’s gift to his wife and a woman’s gift to her husband”) and 12/304 (Book of Legal Stratagems, “On gifts and pre-emption”).
(1) The isnad is weak because Shahr b. Hawshab is unreliable. The report is found in the Musnad 2/297, 420, 422; in Bukhari 8/492-493 (Tafsir of Surat al-Jumuʿa); and in Muslim no. 2546 (Book of the Virtues of the Companions, ch. 231: “The merit of Persia”) through the chain of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – Thawr b. Yazid al-Madani – Abu l-Ghayth Salim – Abu Hurayra, who said: “We were sitting with the Prophet when Surat al-Jumuʿa was revealed to him. When he recited, ‘wa-akharina lamma yalhaqu bihim’ (and others who have not yet joined them), a man asked, ‘Messenger of Allah, who are these?’ The Prophet did not answer until he had been asked once, twice or three times. Salman al-Farisi was among us, so the Prophet placed his hand on Salman and said: ‘If faith were at the Thurayya (the Pleiades), men from these people would reach it.’”
Muslim (no. 2546) also records it through the chain of ʿAbd al-Razzaq – Maʿmar – Jaʿfar al-Jazari – Yazid b. al-Asamm – Abu Hurayra: the Messenger of Allah said, “If the religion were at the Thurayya, a man from Persia—or from the sons of Persia—would bring it down until he grasped it.”
(*) Tadhkirat al-Huffaz 2/675; Tabaqat al-Huffaz p. 294; Shadharat al-Dhahab 2/185.