650 — Al-Firyābī informed us, saying: Hishām ibn Ammār al-Dimashqī narrated to us, saying: Ismāʿīl ibn Ayyāsh narrated to us, saying: Buhayr ibn Saʿd informed us, from Khālid ibn Maʿdān, from Kathīr ibn Murra, from Nuʿaym ibn Hammār, who said:

A man came to the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and asked, “Which martyrs are the best?” He replied, “Those who fight in the battle line and do not turn their faces away until they are killed. They luxuriate in the lofty reaches of Paradise, and ⦗1068⦘ your Lord—Exalted is His Majesty—laughs upon them. When He laughs upon a servant on any occasion, that servant will face no reckoning.”

651 — Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūd also narrated it to us, saying: Muhammad ibn al-Musaffā narrated to us, saying: Abū al-Mughīra narrated to us, from Ismāʿīl ibn Ayyāsh; and he related the same hadith through its chain of transmission.

Muhammad ibn al-Husayn—may Allah have mercy on him—said: We believe in all these teachings of the Sunnah, and we do not ask concerning them, “How?” Those who transmitted these teachings of the Sunnah are the very same people who transmitted to us the Sunnah concerning purification, prayer, zakat, fasting, Hajj, jihad, and all other rulings regarding what is lawful and unlawful. The scholars accepted these teachings from them with the fullest ⦗1069⦘ acceptance. None rejects these teachings of the Sunnah except one who follows the doctrine of the Muʿtazila. Therefore, whoever objects to them, rejects them, or asks, “How?”—regard him with suspicion and beware of him.