957 – ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “Whoever acknowledges his child for even the blink of an eye has no right thereafter to disown him.” Al-Bayhaqi narrated it, and its chain is ḥasan; it is a mawqūf report.⦗1⦘

Hadith grading:
Its chain to ʿUmar is ḥasan, though al-Albani judged it weak.
Al-Hāfiẓ said in al-Talkhīṣ: “The report is mawqūf; al-Bayhaqi transmitted it through Mujālid, from al-Shaʿbī, from Shurayḥ, from ʿUmar.”
It is also transmitted through Wabīṣa ibn Duʾayb, who related that ʿUmar ruled concerning a man who denied paternity of a child while it was still in its mother’s womb, then acknowledged it while it was still in the womb, yet when she delivered he disowned it again. ʿUmar ordered that the man be given eighty lashes for slandering her and then affiliated the child to him. Its chain is ḥasan.

Vocabulary:
ṭarfata ʿayn: pronounced with an open ṭāʾ and a silent rāʾ; literally “the flutter of an eyelid,” meaning an extremely brief moment.

Lessons derived from the two hadiths:

1. The Divine Law is keen to safeguard lineage and to attach every offspring to his true roots. Allah, Exalted is He, says: “O mankind! We created you from a male and a female and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may come to know one another” (al-Ḥujurāt 49:13). Hence the hadith, “May Allah curse whoever claims descent from other than his father.”
2. Severe woe and painful punishment await a woman who betrays her husband, allows a stranger access to herself, conceives from him, and then attributes the child to her husband and his family, so that he becomes