Saʿd, al-Shaʿbī, and others. A number of narrators transmitted from him, among them Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Idrīs, and Hushaym.

Imām Aḥmad said: “He is of no consequence; his ḥadīths are objectionable,” and he declared him a liar regarding what he reported from al-Nuʿmān ibn Saʿd, from al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah in several traditions he ascribed to the Prophet ﷺ. The same verdict of weakness was passed on him by Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, Muḥammad ibn Saʿd, Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān, al-Bukhārī, Abū Dāwūd, Abū Ḥātim, Abū Zurʿah, al-Nasāʾī, Ibn Khuzaymah, Ibn ʿAdī, and others. I have set out their detailed statements about him in al-Takmīl; to Allah belong praise and bounty.

A transmitter of this sort is not to be accepted in what he alone relates—especially in this ḥadīth, which is extremely anomalous. At best he may have heard something but failed to comprehend it properly, then conveyed it in defective wording. The original report, as we mentioned, is that recorded by Ibn Abī al-ʿIshrīn al-Dimashqī, from al-Awzāʿī, from Ḥassān ibn ʿAṭiyyah, from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, from Abū Hurayrah concerning the marketplace of Paradise, and Allah knows best.

An equally strange chain has also been reported. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥaḍramī, the ḥāfiẓ known as Muṭayyin, said: “Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭarīf al-Bajalī told us; my father told us; Muḥammad ibn Kathīr told us; Jābir al-Juʿfī informed me, from Abū Jaʿfar, from ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn, from Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh, who said:

‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ came out to us while we were gathered together and said:

“O Muslims, in Paradise there is a marketplace in which nothing is bought or sold except images; whoever fancies an image of a man or a woman enters into it.”’

Jābir ibn Yazīd al-Juʿfī is weak in ḥadīth, and Allah, Exalted is He, knows best.

Mention of the fragrance of Paradise—its sweetness and its diffusion such that it can be smelled from many years away and from a vast distance

Allah, Exalted, says:
“Those who were slain in the path of Allah—He will never allow their deeds to be lost. He will guide them, set their affairs aright, and admit them to Paradise, which He has made known to them.” [Q 47:4-6]

Some explained “made known to them” to mean: He perfumed it for them, deriving the sense from ʿarf, which denotes a pleasant fragrance.

Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī reported: Shuʿbah told us, from al-Ḥakam, from Mujāhid, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, from the Prophet ﷺ, who said:

“Whoever claims another man as his father will not smell the fragrance of Paradise, although its scent can be detected from a distance of fifty years.”

Aḥmad likewise transmitted it, from Ghundar, from Shuʿbah, with the wording: “seventy years.” (1)

Aḥmad also said: Wahb ibn Jarīr told us; Shuʿbah told us, from al-Ḥakam, from Mujāhid, who said:

“So-and-so wished to be called Junādah ibn Abī Umayyah. ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared: ‘Whoever claims descent from someone other than his father will not smell the fragrance of Paradise; indeed its fragrance is perceptible from a span of seventy years, or the distance of a seventy-year journey.’”