A fifth narration states: “a portion of game meat.”
All of these wordings were recorded by Muslim through several chains, and for that reason they must all be cited so that the version adopted by the author is fully represented.
– “He was at al-Abwāʾ or at Waddān”: the doubt originates with the transmitter al-Saʿb ibn Jaththāmah himself. In one narration related by Ibn ʿAbbās from al-Saʿb, he says, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ passed by me while I was at al-Abwāʾ—or at Waddān—so I offered him meat of a wild donkey.” Al-Ṭabarāni reports that the uncertainty comes from Ibn ʿAbbās, who transmits from al-Saʿb. Some narrators categorically state that it was al-Abwāʾ, while others are just as certain that it was Waddān.
– al-Abwāʾ: a valley whose tributaries include al-Ḥarār, located between Mecca and Medina. It drains into the Red Sea. The Valleys of al-Furʿ and al-Qāḥah meet to form Wādī al-Abwāʾ, which then descends toward the Red Sea, leaving Waddān on its left and passing the town of Mastūrah before it reaches the sea. It is presently known as Wādī al-Khuraybah.
– Waddān: (wāw with fatḥah, doubled dāl, ending in nūn) lies east of the village of Mastūrah on the Medina–Jeddah highway, about 12 km to the east. Its inhabitants today are the Banū Muḥammad of the tribe of Ḥarb. Waddān is not the same as Mastūrah, contrary to what some researchers have supposed. Both al-Abwāʾ and Waddān are roughly 240 km from Mecca.
– lam naruddahu (“we have only returned it”): the two dāl letters may be assimilated or pronounced separately. When assimilation is adopted, hadith specialists usually vocalize the dāl with fatḥah; grammarians, however, consider ḍamma more correct, as the verb is doubled, in the jussive mood, and attached to a masculine pronoun.
– anā ḥurum: the hamzah of anā may be read with kasrah, treating it as the start of a new sentence, or with fatḥah, in which case an implied lām of causation has been omitted.
– ḥurum: with ḍamma on both the ḥāʾ and the rāʾ; its singular is harām, parallel to ʿanāq/ʿunuq, and what is meant