507 – Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī and Muʿādh (may Allah be pleased with them) reported that the Prophet ﷺ said to them: “Do not take the alms-tax except from these four types: barley, wheat, raisins, and dates.” It was narrated by al-Ṭabarānī and al-Ḥākim (1).

• Status of the ḥadith:
  The report is ḥasan. Al-Dāraqutnī (2/98) and al-Ḥākim also recorded it; al-Ḥākim declared its chain ṣaḥīḥ, a judgment endorsed by al-Dhahabī and confirmed by al-Zaylaʿī. Shaykh al-Albānī said: Abū ʿUbayd likewise transmitted it in Al-Amwāl through several routes from ʿUmar ibn ʿUthmān, who said: “I heard Mūsā ibn Ṭalḥah say: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ instructed Muʿādh ibn Jabal, when he sent him to Yemen, to collect the alms-tax on wheat, barley, palm-trees, and grapes.” This chain is sound yet mursal; it is explicitly marfūʿ, and the fact that it is mursal does not harm it since a fully connected version exists from Muʿādh.

In al-Talkhīṣ he wrote: al-Ḥākim and al-Bayhaqī also narrated it on the authority of Abū Mūsā and Muʿādh.

Al-Bayhaqī (7242) said: “Its narrators are reliable and the chain is uninterrupted.”

• Lexical notes:
  – shaʿīr: barley, an herbaceous grain of the grass family that is nutritionally inferior to wheat; the Arabs say, “So-and-so is like barley—eaten yet disparaged.”
  – ḥinṭah (with a kasrah on the ḥāʾ): wheat; plural ḥinṭ.
  – zabīb: raisins, the dried form of grapes.