15- I read before Aḥmad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdī ⦗1⦘ who said: “The judge Abū al-Ḥusayn informed you, saying: Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb narrated to us; Abū ʿUmar al-Hāshimī narrated to us; Abū ʿAlī al-Luʾluʾī narrated; Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī narrated; Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ narrated; al-Walīd ibn Abī Thawr narrated, from Simāk, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmayrah, from al-Aḥnaf ibn Qays, from al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, who said:
‘I was on the plain of al-Baṭḥāʾ with a group in which was the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. A cloud passed by; he looked at it and said, “What do you call this?” They replied, “al-saḥāb (cloud).” He said, “And al-muzn (rain-cloud)?” They replied, “And al-muzn.” He said, “And al-ʿanān (massed cloud)?” They replied, “And al-ʿanān.”
He then said, “Do you know the distance ⦗2⦘ between the heaven and the earth?” They said, “We do not know.” He said, “Indeed the distance between them is either seventy-one, seventy-two, or seventy-three years; then the heaven above that is the same,” until he counted seven heavens. “Above the seventh heaven is a sea whose depth between its lowest and highest part is like the distance between one heaven and another. Above that are eight mountain goats; the distance between their hooves and their knees is like the distance between one heaven and another. On their backs rests the Throne, the distance between its lowest and highest part is like the distance between one heaven and another, and Allah, exalted is He, is above that ⦗3⦘.”’
(1) In other manuscripts it reads, “I recited from Abu al-Muzaffar ibn Ḥamdi,” Abu al-Muzaffar being his kunyah.
(2) The interrogative particle “mā” does not appear in manuscripts H or R.
(3) This hadith is recorded by Abu Dawud in his Sunan, Book of the Jahmiyyah, Hadith no. 4723 (vol. 5, p. 93), and by al-Tirmidhī in his Tafsīr, Hadith no. 3320 (vol. 5, p. 424), who remarks, “This is a ḥasan (good) and gharīb (rare) report.” Al-Walīd ibn Abī Thawr transmitted it from Samāk with a complete isnād and in a mursal (raised) form, while Sharīk reported part of it from Samāk without the isnād.
It also appears in Ibn Khuzaymah’s Kitāb al-Tawḥīd (pp. 100–102); in Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim’s Sunan, Hadith no. 577 (vol. 1, p. 253); in Aḥmad’s Musnad (vol. 1, pp. 206–207); in al-Dārimī’s al-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyyah (p. 19); and in Ibn Mājah’s al-Muqaddimah, Hadith no. 193 (vol. 1, p. 69). Al-Dhahabī includes it in al-ʿUlū (p. 50), noting that Samāk is its sole transmitter from ʿAbd Allāh, about whom “there is some uncertainty” (jahl). Shaykh al-Albānī has classified its isnād as weak in his Takhrīj al-Sunan of Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim.
Commentary: The ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmairah al-Kūfī upon whom this report hinges is, as al-Bukhārī observes, “not known to have heard from al-Aḥnaf,” and, as al-Dhahabī notes, “there is uncertainty regarding him.” He is listed among the trustworthy by Ibn Ḥibbān (al-Thiqāt), while al-Tirmidhī deems his reports ḥasan. See al-Tahḏīb (vol. 5, p. 344) and al-Mīzān (vol. 2, p. 469). As for the narrator Walīd ibn Abī Thawr, al-ʿUqaylī comments that “he reports from Samāk narrations that are munqir (disputed) and not corroborated.” (al-Tahḏīb, vol. 11, pp. 137–138).