Al-Barqānī said: The jurist Abū Bakr al-Abharī told me,

“I was with Ibn Ṣāʿid when a woman entered and asked him, ‘O shaykh, what is your ruling on a well into which a chicken has fallen and died—does that make the water pure or impure?’

Yaḥyā replied, ‘Woe to you! How did the chicken fall in? Could you not have covered the well?’

So I said to her, ‘If the water’s colour, taste or smell has not changed, it is pure.’ At that moment Yaḥyā did not possess enough legal knowledge to answer the woman himself.”

Al-Khaṭīb (1) commented, “Ibn Ṣāʿid held a lofty rank in learning and produced works on the Sunnah, arranging the reports according to legal rulings. It is likely that he refrained from answering the woman out of scrupulous caution, for the question is one on which the scholars differ.”

Ibn Shāhīn and others said: “Ibn Ṣāʿid died in Kūfah in Dhū al-Qaʿdah of the year 318 AH, at the age of ninety-odd years.”

We have already mentioned the dispute between him and Ibn Abī Dāwūd, each of them disparaging the other in the latter’s biography. We do not accept the criticisms that contemporaries level against one another; both of them—praise be to Allah—are reliable.

Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-ʿAlawī at al-Thaghr informed us; Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Qaṭīʿī informed us; Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh informed us; Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Zaynabī informed us; Abū Ṭāhir al-Mukhal·liṣ narrated to us; Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad narrated to us; Isḥāq ibn Shāhīn narrated to us; Khālid ibn ʿAbd Allāh narrated to us, from Khālid al-Ḥaddāʾ, from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbās, from Usāmah:

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “Ribā (usury) is found only in deferred exchange.” (2)