Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Bazzār said in his Musnad (1): “I found in my collection a report from Muḥammad ibn Muʿāwiyah al-Baghdādī: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar narrated to us, from Suhayl ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ, from his father, from Abū Hurayrah, attributed to the Prophet:
‘Allah spoke to this western sea and He spoke to the eastern sea. To the western sea He said, “I am going to place within you servants of Mine; what will you do with them?” It replied, “I shall drown them.” He said, “Then let your fury remain within your confines,” and He forbade it jewelry and game. Then He spoke to the eastern sea, saying, “I am going to place within you servants of Mine; what will you do with them?” It replied, “I shall carry them upon my back and treat them as a mother treats her child.” So He rewarded it with jewelry and game.’
He then remarked (2): “We know of no one who narrated this from Suhayl except ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, and his ḥadīth is objectionable.”
He added: “Suhayl also transmitted it from al-Nuʿmān ibn Abī ʿAyyāsh, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr, as a statement halted at him.”
I say: The version stopped at ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ is the more likely, for on the Day of Yarmūk he found two saddle-bags filled with the books of the People of the Book and thereafter related many Israelite reports from them—some sound and famous, others dubious or rejected. As for the version raised to the Prophet, it was uniquely reported by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn ʿĀṣim ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, Abū al-Qāsim al-Madanī, the qāḍī of Madinah. Imām Aḥmad (4) said of him: “He is nothing. I heard from him and then tore up his ḥadīth. He was a liar, and his narrations are spurious.” He was likewise declared weak by Ibn Maʿīn (5), Abū Zurʿah (6), Abū Ḥātim (7), al-Jawzajānī (8), al-Bukhārī (9), Abū Dāwūd (10), and al-Nasāʾī (11). Ibn ʿAdī (12) said: “Most of his reports are objectionable, and the most egregious of them is the narration about the sea.”
The exegetes who discuss latitudes and longitudes, seas and rivers, mountains and distances, the distribution of inhabited and ruined lands, and the seven true climes in their terminology, as well as the regions