Abū ʿUbaydah al-Ḥaddād related—through al-Akhdar ibn ʿAjlān, from Ibn Jurayj, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ—on the authority of Abū Hurayrah that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ took him by the hand and said:
“O Abū Hurayrah, truly Allah created the heavens and the earth and whatever lies between them in six days; then, on the seventh day, He rose over the Throne, and He created the soil on Saturday.”
He mentioned the remainder of the report in similar words, and the transmission from Ibn Jurayj is disputed.(2)
This ḥadīth was examined by ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī, al-Bukhārī, al-Bayhaqī, and other leading ḥadīth masters.(3)
Al-Bukhārī said in his History(4): “Some have narrated it from Kaʿb, and that is the sounder view,” meaning that Abū Hurayrah heard it from Kaʿb al-Aḥbār. The two men used to keep company and sit together for study: Kaʿb would read to him from his written pages, and Abū Hurayrah would respond with what confirmed them from the Prophet ﷺ.(5) Thus this report was one that Abū Hurayrah received from Kaʿb’s written pages, but some transmitters erred and raised it to the Prophet ﷺ himself, reinforcing that elevation by adding the phrase, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ took my hand.”
Its text also contains striking peculiarities. For one thing, it does not mention the creation of the heavens, yet it speaks of the earth and all it contains being created in seven days—contrary to the Qur’an,(7) which states that the earth was created in four days and the heavens in two days from smoke, that is, the vapor that rose when the immense body of water—brought into being from the froth of the earth by the Almighty’s boundless power—was set in motion. ʿIsmāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suddī the Elder cited this in a report he narrated from Abū Mālik and Abū Ṣāliḥ on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās, and from Murrah al-Hamdānī on the authority of Ibn Masʿūd, and from a number of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: “He it is who created for you all that is on the earth; then He turned toward the heaven and fashioned it into seven heavens” (al-Baqarah 2:29).(8)