200 – On the authority of Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him):
“ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him) once passed by Ḥassān while the latter was reciting poetry in the mosque. ʿUmar cast a glance at him, whereupon Ḥassān said, ‘I used to recite here, and in it was one who is better than you.’” Agreed upon (1).
Vocabulary of the ḥadith
• Ḥassān: with a doubled sīn; he is Ḥassān ibn Thābit al-Anṣārī al-Khazrajī, the Poet of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
• yanshid: to recite poetry aloud, letting the people in the mosque hear it and chanting it melodiously.
• laḥaẓa ilayh: al-Miṣbāḥ says, “I laḥaẓtuhu with the eye,” or “laḥaẓtu ilayh,” meaning, “I looked at him from the corner of my eye, to the right or the left.” al-liḥāẓ (with a kasrah) is the outer corner of the eye nearest the temple; here it signifies a look of disapproval and reproach.
Points derived from the ḥadith
- al-Bukhārī reports that Ḥassān recited in the mosque the verses with which he answered the idolaters on behalf of the Prophet ﷺ. ʿUmar looked at him as though objecting, so Ḥassān said, “I used to recite in it, and in it was one who is better than you.”
- al-Tirmidhī and Abū Dāwūd transmit, through the chain of ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb from his father from his grandfather, that “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ forbade competing in poetry in the mosque,” and al-Tirmidhī graded the report ḥasan.
- The scholars reconciled the two narrations by saying that what is prohibited, whether in the mosque or elsewhere, is poetry