And Allah—glorified and exalted—is the One who knows best.¹
Note: Dear reader, you will find that many leading scholars have brought forth this hadith in numerous sources on the authority of the two noble Companions, Anas and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. There is a third version, similar in wording but with an additional clause, which I have deliberately omitted because its chain is extremely weak; I documented it in al-Ḍaʿīfah, no. 4095.
In spite of all this, Ibn Ḥazm states in his Risālah, p. 97:
“Who transmitted it is unknown.”
He reiterates the point in al-Muḥallā 9 / 57–58:
“We do not know any chain for it; people simply mention it without qualification, and that amounts to nothing.”
This is one of the many proofs confirming the verdict of the ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī regarding Ibn Ḥazm:
“He is prone to numerous mistakes when discussing the authentication or weakening of hadiths and the conditions of the narrators,”
as I previously quoted in al-Ṣaḥīḥah on the occasion of Ibn Ḥazm’s weakening of the earlier ḥadith recorded by al-Bukhārī.
From this, discerning readers will recognize Shaykh al-Ghazālī’s ignorance of the scholars’ respective ranks and specializations—or else his following of personal whims—when he relies solely on Ibn Ḥazm to declare every hadith prohibiting musical instruments weak, given Ibn Ḥazm’s standing in this field. Nor did al-Ghazālī stop there