…from Ibn Masʿūd as a companion-report (mawqūf), and it is also related from him as a Prophetic report (marfūʿ), as mentioned earlier in the Introduction, p. 10; its full documentation will appear in Chapter Eight, p. 145.

Addendum

A questioner may say: From the foregoing aḥādīth, investigations, and the statements of the scholars we have learned that every musical instrument is forbidden without exception, save the duff at a wedding or on the two ʿEid days. Is there any other occasion on which the duff is likewise permissible?

I reply: In the words of some scholars there are hints of allowing the duff at “joyous occasions”—so they phrase it—as well as at circumcisions and when a traveller returns. Personally, I have found no proof for this, not even at the level of a companion-report. I did notice, however, that Ibn al-Qayyim, in his work Masʾalat al-Samāʿ, p. 133, cites a report transmitted by Abū Shuʿayb al-Harrānī, with his chain from Khālid, from Ibn Sīrīn, stating that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, whenever he heard the sound of the duff, would inquire about it; if they said, “A wedding” or “A circumcision,” he kept silent.

Its transmitters are trustworthy, yet the chain is broken. Moreover, Ibn al-Qayyim strayed far afield in attributing it to Abū Shuʿayb al-Harrānī; although reliable, he is not a well-known author. The report is in fact found in the works of better-known and more authoritative compilers, such as Ibn Abī Shaybah (4/192)—who records it with the wording “he approved of it” instead of “he kept silent”—and ʿAbd al-Razzāq (11/5), from whom al-Bayhaqī (7/290) transmits it through two routes from Ayyūb, from Ibn Sīrīn: that ʿUmar used to … and so forth. Ibn Abī Shaybah’s wording is:

From Ibn Sīrīn, who said, “I was informed that ʿUmar …”