whereupon he instantly produced a chain of transmission back to the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—claiming that the Prophet said (1), “Al-Ḥasan heard from Abū Hurayrah!”
Something similar occurred with Ghayāth ibn Ibrāhīm (2). He once entered upon the caliph al-Mahdī and found him amusing himself with pigeons; on the spot Ghayāth produced a chain to the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—asserting that he had said, “No contest (3) is permitted except in archery, camel racing, horse racing, or wing” (4). He had inserted the words “or wing” (5) into the report. Al-Mahdī realized that the man had fabricated the ḥadīth merely to flatter him, so he ordered the pigeons to be slaughtered (6).
Another indicator is what may be gathered (7) from the content of the report itself: if it contradicts the explicit wording of the Qur’an, the mass-transmitted Sunnah, a point of incontrovertible consensus, or plain reason, none (8) of those admits of any strained interpretation (9).
(1) The word “qala” (“he said”) is crossed out in MS B.
(2) The narrator is Ghiyath ibn Ibrahim al-Nakha‘i, whose reports are rejected. See: Masāʾil Harb al-Karmani 3:1314; Ibn Abi Hatim, al-Jarh wa al-Ta‘dil 7:57.
(3) MS K vocalises the word as “sabq” (with a silent b), whereas the reading adopted from MSS D, W, Y, L and M is “sabaq” (with a fatḥa). Al-Khattabi, Maʿālim al-Sunan 2:255, explains: “Al-sabaq (fatḥa on the b) denotes the prize put up for the winner, be it a sum of money or a gift, whereas al-sabq (sukūn on the b) is the verbal noun ‘to outstrip someone.’ The sound wording in the hadith is al-sabaq with the fatḥa.”
(4) Reported by Abu Dawud 2574; al-Tirmidhi 1700; al-Nasāʾi 3585; Ibn Mājah 2878; and Ahmad 7482, from Abu Hurayra with the wording: “No sabaq (racing stake) is allowed except with a camel, a horse, or an arrow.”
(5) The clause “and he added to the hadith: ‘or wing’” is absent from MS T.
(6) See: al-Madkhal ilā Kitāb al-Iklīl by al-Hakim, p. 55; al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tārīkh Baghdad 14:276.
(7) MSS B and C read “yujad” (“is found”); in MS A the word is written without diacritical dots.
(8) MS K adds “bi-shayʾ” (“anything”).
(9) In the margin of MS A, in the author’s own hand, is the note: “then it likewise reached.”