Hadith Six: on the authority of Abu Saʿid—Saʿd ibn Malik ibn Sinan al-Ansari. It reaches us through several chains; the first is as follows.
Imam Ahmad (1) said: Bakr ibn ʿIsa narrated to us; Jamīʿ ibn Maṭar (2) al-Hubṭī narrated to us; Abu Ruʾbah Shaddad ibn ʿImrān al-Qaysī (3) narrated to us, from Abu Saʿid al-Khudri, who said:
Abu Bakr came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and said, “O Messenger of Allah, I passed through such-and-such a valley and saw a man, deeply humble, well presented, standing in prayer.”
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “Go back to him and kill him.”
[The narrator added:] Abu Bakr went, but when he saw the man in that condition (4) he was reluctant to kill him and returned to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
The Prophet ﷺ then said to ʿUmar, “Go to him and kill him.” ʿUmar went, and when he saw the man in the same state Abu Bakr had witnessed, he too disliked killing him. He returned and said, “O Messenger of Allah, I found him humble in devotion and was unwilling to kill him.”
He said, “No—ʿAli, you go and kill him.” ʿAli went but did not find the man, so he came back and said, “O Messenger of Allah, I did not see him.”
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ replied, “That man and his companions recite the Quran, yet it does not pass beyond their throats. They will bolt out of the religion just as an arrow passes straight through its prey; they will not return to it until the arrow returns to its bowstring. Kill them, for they are the worst of creation.”
Ahmad alone recorded this report (6).
Al-Bazzar, in his Musnad (7), transmitted the story through the chain of al-Aʿmash from Abu Sufyan from Anas ibn Malik, and Abu Yaʿla (8) transmitted it through Abu Khaythamah from ʿUmar ibn Yunus from ʿIkrimah ibn ʿAmmar from Yazid al-Raqashi from Anas. Their versions are longer and contain additional material (9).
Second chain:
Imam Ahmad (10) said: Abu Ahmad narrated to us; Sufyan narrated to us, from Habib ibn Abi Thabit, from al-Dahhak al-Mishriqi, from Abu Saʿid al-Khudri, from the Prophet ﷺ, in a narration in which he mentioned a people who would rise up against a group of Muslims