614 — “Whoever cuts down a lote tree, Allah will cast his head down into the Fire”—that is, a lote tree within the Sacred Sanctuary.

Abū Dāwūd (5239), al-Nasāʾī in al-Siyar (2/43/2), al-Ṭaḥāwī in Mushkil al-Āthār (4/119, 120), al-Ṭabarānī in al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ (1/123/1)—from whom al-Ḍiyāʾ al-Maqdisī also related it in al-Aḥādīth al-Mukhtārah (56/136/3)—and al-Bayhaqī in al-Sunan al-Kubrā (6/139) all transmitted it through several routes from Ibn Jurayj, from ʿUthmān ibn Abī Sulaymān, from Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad ibn Jubayr ibn Muṭʿim, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥubshī, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said it.

Al-Ṭabarānī said—and this additional statement is his: “It is not narrated from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥubshī except through this chain of transmission; Ibn Jurayj alone narrated it.”

I say: Its narrators are trustworthy, and the chain of transmission is sound, were it not for Ibn Jurayj’s ambiguous use of the term “from.” However, in another hadith reported by Aḥmad (3/411–412) and al-Ḍiyāʾ, he explicitly stated that he heard it directly from this ʿUthmān ibn Abī Sulaymān. Allah knows best. Maʿmar differed from him in its chain of transmission, saying: from ʿUthmān ibn Abī Sulaymān, from a man of Thaqīf, from ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr, who attributed the hadith directly to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, with similar wording. Abū Dāwūd (5240) and al-Bayhaqī (6/139–140) reported it.