Al-Bukhārī said: “The correct account is that the report goes back only to Ka‘b.” Al-Bayhaqī also discussed its defects. They explained that it is an error, not something Abū Hurayrah narrated from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. This is among the reports whose inclusion by Muslim was criticized by expert hadith scholars, just as they criticized his inclusion of a few other reports. This has been discussed at length elsewhere.

Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, commenting on the words of Allah Most High,

“created the earth in two days,”

mentioned that Ibn ‘Abbās said: “He created the earth on Sunday and Monday.” This was also the view of ‘Abd Allāh ibn Salām, al-Dahhāk, Mujāhid, Ibn Jurayj, al-Suddī, and the majority. Muqātil said: “On Tuesday and Wednesday.”

Ibn al-Jawzī said: “Muslim included the hadith of Abū Hurayrah:

‘Allah created the soil on Saturday.’”

He said: “This hadith contradicts what preceded, and it is more authentic.”

He thus judged this account authentic because he assumed the hadith was authentic, since Muslim had narrated it. Yet there are other instances of this: Muslim narrated hadiths known to contain errors, such as Abū Sufyān’s statement upon accepting Islam: “I wish to marry Umm Habībah to you.” There is no disagreement that the Prophet had married her before Abū Sufyān accepted Islam. Such instances, however, are exceedingly few.

Another example is what Muslim narrated through some chains of transmission of the hadith concerning the eclipse prayer: that the Prophet performed it with three or four bowings. The correct account is that he performed it only once, with two bowings. This is why al-Bukhārī included only this account, as did al-Shāfi‘ī, Ahmad ibn Hanbal—according to one of the two reports from him—and others. Al-Bukhārī avoided errors of this kind; for whenever there occurred in some of the