al-Khaṭīb said (1): “He was reliable, firmly grounded.”
He passed away in the month of Ramadan, in the year 301 AH.
I read to Abū al-Faḍl Aḥmad b. Hibat Allah; he informed us that Zayn al-Umanaʾ Ḥasan b. Muḥammad informed us; al-Mubārak b. ʿAlī informed us; Abū al-Ḥasan b. al-ʿAllāf informed us; Abū al-Qāsim b. Bishrān informed us; Abū Bakr al-Ājurrī informed us; ʿAbd Allah b. Muḥammad b. Nājiya narrated to us; Wahb b. Baqiyya told us; Khālid al-Wāsiṭī narrated to us, from Muṭarrif b. Ṭarīf, from Abū Isḥāq, from al-Ḥārith, from ʿAlī—may Allah be pleased with him:
“The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, forbade a man to raise his voice with the Qur’an before the night prayer and after it, because he thereby confuses his companions in the prayer while the people are praying.”
This ḥadith possesses a sound chain of transmission (2). It contains a prohibition against the recitation of the weekly portions (asbāʿ) in the mosques at the very times when people are engaged in prayer, for that clearly disturbs the worshippers. This applies even when the recitation is permissible and measured (tartīl); but if their recitation is damj—running the words together—and hadhrama (3)—rattling them off quickly—and swallowing
(1) In Ta’rikh, vol. 10, p. 104.
(2) How can the chain of transmission be judged sound when it contains al-Harith ibn Abd Allah al-Hamdani, known as al-Aʿwar, whom several scholars—including the author himself in al-Mizan 1/435—have declared weak? Yet the substance of the hadith is reliably established through another route. Abu Dawud records it in his Sunan (no. 1332), Book of Prayer, chapter “Raising the voice when reciting during the night prayer,” through the chain: Abd al-Razzaq → Maʿmar → Ismaʿil ibn Umayya → Abu Salama → Abu Saʿid, who said: “The Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, was observing iʿtikaf in the mosque, and he heard people reciting aloud. He drew back the curtain and said: ‘Each of you is in intimate discourse with his Lord, so do not harm one another, and let none of you raise his voice above another’s recitation’—or he said: ‘in prayer.’” This isnad is authentic.
Malik likewise narrates it in al-Muwattaʾ 1/101, section “Practice concerning recitation,” through the chain: Yahya ibn Saʿid → Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn al-Harith al-Taymi → Abu Hazim al-Tammar → al-Bayadi: “The Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, came upon some worshippers whose voices had grown loud in recitation and said: ‘The worshipper is privately conversing with his Lord; let him consider what he says to Him, and let none of you raise his voice above another’s in the Quran.’” This chain is also authentic.
(3) Lisan al-Arab explains: “al-hadhrama means rapid recitation. Ibn Abbas said: ‘To recite the Quran in three days is dearer to me than to recite it in a single night in a hurried manner (hadhrama).’”