“I once asked Mālik ibn Anas about the leniency some people of Medina show toward singing.” He answered, “Only the shameless engage in it among us.”
Al-Khallāl likewise transmits with an authentic chain from Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mundhir—a trustworthy Medinese scholar and one of al-Bukhārī’s teachers—who was asked, “Do you people permit singing?” He replied, “God forbid! No one does that here except the shameless.”
As for the statements that al-Shawkānī cited (mentioned earlier and deferred for discussion), the response is twofold:
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Even if the attribution to their alleged authors—whether Kufans, Medinese, or others—were sound, they carry no weight because they contradict the clear, rigorously authentic hadiths cited above.
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Authentic reports from some of those very authorities state the opposite; these are preferable and, indeed, binding. I shall mention what I have been able to locate:
First: Shurayḥ the judge. Abū Ḥuṣayn said, “A man broke another man’s tanbūr (lute), and Shurayḥ, when the case was brought before him, ruled that no compensation was due.”
Ibn Abī Shaybah records it in his Muṣannaf 7/312/3275 with a sound chain, as do al-Bayhaqī 6/101 and al-Khallāl 26. Al-Khallāl then comments:
Ḥanbal said, “I heard Abū ʿAbd Allāh say, ‘This report is objectionable (munkar); he issued no ruling in the matter.’”
Abū ʿAbd Allāh is Imām Aḥmad, and a similar report is related from him by Abū Dāwūd in his Masāʾil.