even though the verse employs the wording ishtirāʾ (purchasing), for that verb is often used whenever one thing is exchanged for, or preferred to, another.
Among the reports from the early generations that attest to the wisdom behind the prohibition are the following:
- Ibn Masʿūd said, “Singing makes hypocrisy grow in the heart.”
It was recorded by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā in Dhamm al-Malāhī fol. 4/2, and through his route by al-Bayhaqī in al-Sunan 10/223 and in Shuʿab al-Īmān 4/278, nos. 5098–5099, via Ḥammād from Ibrāhīm, who said: “ʿAbdullāh said…” and then cited it.
I comment: This isnād is sound; its narrators are trustworthy. On its face, however, it appears to be broken, for Ibrāhīm—meaning Ibn Yazīd al-Nakhaʿī—did not meet ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd, and some contemporary scholars who have collected the hadiths censuring singing have declared it defective on that basis.¹
What escaped them is that it is authentically reported from Ibrāhīm that he said to al-Aʿmash, when the latter requested, “Provide me with an isnād from Ibn Masʿūd”: “When I tell you, ‘[So-and-so] from ʿAbdullāh,’ that is what I heard directly; but when I merely say, ‘ʿAbdullāh said,’ it is from more than one person on the authority of ʿAbdullāh.”
I therefore say: It is well known that Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī is a reliable and eminent tābiʿī. Hence, when he transmits from “more than one” of his teachers, those teachers are at the very least his peers among the tābiʿīn, if not senior to him.