Imam Aḥmad also related (1): “ʿAbd al-Raḥmān narrated to us; Manṣūr ibn Saʿd narrated to us; from Budayl ibn Maysarah; from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Shaqīq; from Maysarah al-Fajr, who said: I asked, ‘O Messenger of Allah, when were you a prophet?’ He replied,
‘While Adam was between spirit and body.’
Aḥmad alone transmitted this chain.
ʿUmar ibn Aḥmad ibn Shāhīn likewise recorded it in his book Proofs of Prophethood through the narration of Abū Hurayrah. He said: ‘ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz—meaning Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī—told us; Abū Hammām told us; [from] al-Walīd ibn Muslim, from al-Awzāʿī; Yahyā narrated to me, from Abū Salamah, from Abū Hurayrah, who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was asked, “When was prophethood ordained for you?” He answered,
“Between Adam’s creation and the breathing of the spirit into him.”’
He also transmitted it through another route from al-Awzāʿī with the wording:
‘While Adam was lying prostrate in his clay.’
Al-Baghawī (5) likewise reported—through Aḥmad ibn al-Miqdām, from Baqiyyah, from Saʿīd ibn Bashīr, from Qatādah, from Abū Hurayrah, in a marfūʿ tradition—regarding the verse, “And [remember] when We took from the prophets their covenant—and from you and from Noah …” (al-Aḥzāb 33:7). The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said,
‘I was the first of the prophets to be decreed in creation and the last of them to be sent forth.’
In another chain reported by Ibn Muzāḥim, from Qays ibn al-Rabīʿ, from Jābir, from al-Shaʿbī, from Ibn ʿAbbās, it was asked, ‘O Messenger of Allah, when did you become a prophet?’ He replied,
‘While Adam was between spirit and body.’ (7)
As for the soothsayers among the Arabs, the devils from among the jinn used to convey such information to them from what they could steal of the heavenly councils, at a time when
(1) Found in al-Musnad (vol. 5, p. 59); its isnad (chain of transmission) is sound.
(2) Similarly in the Ḥ and Ṭ editions and in al-Musnad it reads “katabat.”
(3) The text enclosed in brackets is an interpolation required by the context, since the kunya of al-Walīd b. Muslim is Abū al-‘Abbās, not Abū Hummām. Abū Hummām here refers to al-Walīd b. Shu‘ja al-Sukkūnī, who narrates from al-Walīd b. Muslim and from whom Abū al-Qāsim al-Bāghawī narrates, as established in Tahdhib al-Tahdhib (vol. 11, p. 135).
(4) In the Ḥ version it appears as “Yahya b. Abī Salama,” which is a scribal error; the correct reading, attested in the Ṭ version, is that Yahya is the son of Abī Kathīr al-Ṭā’ī (their mawla), and that Abū Salama is the son of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. ‘Awf al-Zuhri al-Madani.
(5) Al-Bāghawī is Abū al-Qāsim ‘Abdallāh b. Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz (d. 317 AH); he is deemed reliable by al-Suyūṭī in al-Jāmi‘ al-Ṣaghīr. Al-Manāwī notes in Fayḍ al-Qadīr (5/53) that Ibn Sa‘d records it in al-Ṭabaqāt (1/149) from Qatāda as mursal; it is also transmitted by Abū Nu‘aym in al-Dalā’il, by Ibn Abī Ḥātim in his Tafsīr, and by Ibn Luhl al-Daylamī. I add that al-Ṭabarī includes it in his Tafsīr (21/125) via Bishr from Yazīd. It will appear again from Abū Nu‘aym (p. 129, n. 10) in this volume, and the author also cites it in his Tafsīr (3/469).
(6) In both the Ḥ and Ṭ versions it appears as “Baqiyya b. Sa‘īd b. Bashīr,” which is a scribal error; his correct name is Baqiyya b. al-Walīd Abū Yaḥmad al-Ḥimṣī al-Kalā‘ī. His own narration is from Sa‘īd b. Bashīr, whose narration from Qatāda is confirmed in Sa‘īd’s biography in Tahdhib al-Tahdhib (4/8–9).
(7) The full hadith context will appear on p. 129, note 6, attributed to Abū Nu‘aym’s Dalā’il al-Nubuwwa (“Proofs of Prophethood”); I did not find it there. However, the editor of Dalā’il al-Nu‘aym cites it in his introduction (p. 25) and suggests that the printed Dalā’il is the Muntakhab (“Selected”) edition, not the complete work.