the Messenger of Allah ﷺ with fervent devotion, whereas you—the people of this house and the very place where the summons was first proclaimed—drove the inviter from his land, harmed him and his Companions, and came to Islam later than I did, at a time you yourselves found distasteful.” Marwan regretted what he had said and thereafter kept his distance from him. (1)

Ibn Abī Khaythamah said:
Harun ibn Ma‘ruf narrated to us; Muhammad ibn Salamah narrated to us; Muhammad ibn Ishaq narrated to us, from ‘Umar—or ‘Uthman—ibn ‘Urwah, from his father, meaning ‘Urwah ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwam, who said:
“My father al-Zubayr said to me, ‘Bring me close to that Yemeni man’—meaning Abu Hurayrah—‘for he relates many reports from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.’ So I brought him near. Abu Hurayrah began narrating, and al-Zubayr kept saying, ‘True; false; true; false.’ I said, ‘Father, what do you mean by “true; false”?’ He replied, ‘My son, I do not doubt that he heard these hadith from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, but some of them he has placed in their proper context while others he has applied in contexts that are not theirs.’ (2)

‘Ali ibn al-Madini said:
Wahb ibn Jarir narrated to us, from his father, from Muhammad ibn Ishaq, from Muhammad ibn Ibrahim, from Abu Anas (3) ibn Abi ‘Amir, who said:
“I was with Talhah ibn ‘Ubayd Allah when a man entered and said, ‘O Abu Muhammad, by Allah, we do not know whether this Yemeni man knows more about the Messenger of Allah than you do, or whether he attributes to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ words he never heard or that the Messenger never uttered.’
“Talhah replied, ‘By Allah, we have no doubt that he heard from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ things we never heard and learned from him knowledge we never learned. We were people of means who had homes and families; we would visit the Messenger of Allah ﷺ at the two ends of the day and then return. He, however, was poor, without wealth or family; his hand was always with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, going wherever he went. We therefore do not doubt that he learned what we did not learn and heard what we did not hear.’ Al-Tirmidhi has narrated the report in similar terms. (4)

Shu‘bah said, on the authority of Ash‘ath ibn Sulaym, from his father, who said:
“I heard Abu Ayyub narrating from Abu Hurayrah. It was said to him, ‘You are a Companion of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, yet you narrate from Abu Hurayrah?’ He replied, ‘Abu Hurayrah has heard what we did not hear; for me to narrate from him is dearer to me than to narrate directly from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ regarding something I did not hear from him.’

Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj said:
‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Darimi narrated to us; Marwan al-Dimashqi narrated to us, from al-Layth ibn Sa‘d. Bukayr ibn al-Ashajj related to me: Busr (5) ibn Sa‘id said, ‘Fear Allah and be cautious in hadith. By Allah, I have seen us sitting with Abu Hurayrah: he would narrate to us from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and narrate to us from Ka‘b al-Ahbar. Then he would rise, and I would hear some of those who had been with us attributing the Messenger’s hadith to Ka‘b and Ka‘b’s hadith to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. And in