He then said: Imam Ahmad remarked, “Nabhān has transmitted two remarkable reports: this one, and another that says, ‘If one of you women has a mukātib (a slave with a contract of manumission), she must veil herself from him.’” By this he was hinting at the weakness of Nabhān’s narrations, for he related only these two traditions, both of which run counter to established principles.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr stated, “Nabhān is an unknown narrator; he is mentioned only through al-Zuhrī’s transmission of this hadith from him. The hadith of Fāṭimah, however, is authentic, so the proof rests with it.”

It is also possible that Nabhān’s report concerns only the wives of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. This is the view expressed by both Ahmad and Abū Dāwūd.

The shaykh asked Ahmad, “Is Nabhān’s hadith restricted to his ﷺ wives, while the hadith of Fāṭimah applies to everyone else?” He replied, “Yes.”

The two Maqdisī brothers, the sons of Qudāmah, add: “If a contradiction is assumed, giving precedence to the authentic hadiths is preferable to relying on a solitary report whose chain is open to objection.”

What they attribute to Abū Dāwūd is indeed found in some manuscripts of his Sunan, as in the edition annotated in ʿAwn al-Maʿbūd (4 / 109). Abū Dāwūd said, “This concerns the Prophet’s ﷺ wives alone. Do you not see that Fāṭimah bint Qays observed her waiting period in the house of Ibn Umm Maktūm?” ⦗67⦘