“…A group from my nation will most certainly drink wine, yet they will call it by other names. Musical instruments and female singers will be played over their heads. Then Allah will cause the earth to swallow them up and will turn some of them into apes and swine.”

Al-Bukhari recorded it in al-Tārīkh 1/1/305, saying: “ʿAbd Allah b. Ṣāliḥ narrated to us; he said: Muʿāwiyah b. Ṣāliḥ told me, from Ḥātim b. Ḥarīth, from Mālik b. Abī Maryam, with this wording.”

In his biographical notice on Kaʿb b. ʿĀṣim al-Ashʿarī—whose kunyah is Abū Mālik, and it is also said that Abū Mālik’s personal name was ʿAmr, and he was a Companion—al-Bukhari added: “Abū Ṣāliḥ related to me, from Muʿāwiyah b. Ṣāliḥ, a shortened version of it.”

The complete ḥadith was likewise transmitted by Ibn Mājah 4020; Ibn Ḥibbān 1384 (in al-Mawārid); al-Bayhaqī 8/295 and 10/231; Ibn Abī Shaybah in al-Muṣannaf 8/107/3810; Aḥmad 5/342; al-Maḥāmilī in al-Amālī 101/611; Ibn al-Aʿrābī in his Muʿjam fol. 182/1; al-Ṭabarānī in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr 3/320–321; Ibn ʿAsākir in Tārīkh Dimashq 16/229–230; and al-Ḥāfiẓ in Taghlīq al-Taʿlīq 5/20–21, all through various routes from Muʿāwiyah b. Ṣāliḥ with the same content.

I say: The isnād’s transmitters are reliable except for this Mālik, for he is known only through Ḥātim’s narration from him; hence he is unknown. For that reason al-Ḥāfiẓ described him as “maqbūl,” meaning acceptable only when corroborated by a supporting chain.