Under item 3 he writes: “Because of what has been reported from ʿUmar, who said: ‘We used to wash the deceased; some of us would bathe afterward and some would not.’ Al-Khaṭīb narrated it with a sound isnād.”

I say: There is no doubt that its chain of transmission is sound, yet his prefacing it with the word ruwiya (“it is reported”) is out of step with the convention of the ḥadith scholars, for this and similar formulas are normally used for weak reports. This shows that the author did not observe that convention here. Will he, one wonders, observe it when he introduces a ḥadith with this formula and then remains silent about it, as he did with the narration cited on p. 44? I remain doubtful, as I mentioned there. Allah knows best.

Furthermore, the author followed al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar in the Talkhīṣ—or someone who quoted from him—by restricting the attribution to al-Khaṭīb, i.e. to his Tārīkh. This could give the impression that the report is not found with anyone of a higher rank whose book is more famous. That is not the case, for al-Dāraqutnī also recorded it in his Sunan, p. 191. I wished to draw attention to this useful point.

Next he says: “When Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays washed her husband Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq (may Allah be pleased with him) after his death, she went out and asked the Emigrants who were present, ‘Today is bitterly cold and I am fasting; do I have to bathe?’ They said, ‘No.’ Mālik narrated it.”

I say: His definite wording—“Asmāʾ washed her husband …” and so on—suggests that the story has an authentic isnād, but it does not, because it is broken. Mālik included it in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, 1/222–223, through ʿAbd Allah ibn Abī Bakr, who said that Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays washed Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq when he died and then went out …

And this ʿAbd Allah ibn Abī Bakr is not the son of Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, as some might suppose, but rather