Miṣr 273, and by al-Ṭabarānī in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr 18/352/897.

I say: The isnād is weak, due to the weakness of ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Zahr. For this reason al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī ruled it weak in his Takhrīj of the Iḥyāʾ 2/272, attributing it only to Aḥmad. He overlooked the first route, as well as the second, third, and fourth ḥadiths with their multiple chains. Such an omission is a serious lapse for a scholar of his stature—especially when he was documenting al-Ghazālī’s statement after the latter had remarked that there is no disagreement over listening to the nightingale and other birds, and had extended the analogy to the reed, the drum, the tambourine, and the like. Although this analogy conflicts with the aforementioned ḥadiths and with the juristic principle, “No ijtihād is permissible where an explicit text exists,” al-ʿIrāqī nonetheless did well and inclined toward the correct view when he added:

“Nothing is exempted from this ruling except the instruments of amusement—stringed instruments and flutes—that the Law has explicitly forbidden.”

I say: This exception indicates that al-Ghazālī, for example, had not encountered any textual prohibition of the drum. Therefore, al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī should, when documenting this clause of exception, have cited some of the earlier ḥadiths that explicitly ban the drum, rather than suffice with a few weak reports such as that of ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Zahr and the like, and then say, “All of them are weak.” True, he had already produced al-Bukhārī’s ḥadith on the permissibility of musical instruments and had refuted Ibn Ḥazm’s grading of it as weak by showing that Abū Dāwūd and al-Ismāʿīlī supplied a connected chain, yet adducing the material to which I have alluded would have further strengthened the purport of this