In the Musnad (fol. 77/2), from the narration of Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī:
“The people of Qurayẓah submitted to the judgment of Saʿd, so the Prophet ﷺ sent for him. When he arrived, the Prophet said, ‘Stand up to your leader’—or he said, ‘to the best among you.’ Saʿd then sat beside the Prophet ﷺ, who said, ‘These people have placed themselves under your verdict.’ Saʿd replied, ‘My ruling is that their fighting men be killed and their women and children taken captive.’ The Prophet said, ‘You have judged with the judgment of the King.’”
Two points of benefit
- This ḥadīth is widely circulated with the wording “for your leader (li-sayyidikum),” yet in both chains, as you have just seen, the wording is “to your leader (ilā sayyidikum).” I know of no basis for the first wording. From it arose a juridical error: using the report to recommend standing for someone who arrives, as Ibn Baṭṭāl and others have done. Al-Ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir Abū al-Faḍl said in his book Al-Tanbīh ʿalā al-Alfāẓ allatī Waqaʿ fī Naqlihā wa Ḍabṭihā Taṣḥīf wa Khaṭaʾ … (fol. 17/2):
“Among the matters he mentioned in this chapter concerning the word sayyid is the Prophet’s statement to Saʿd: ‘Stand up li-sayyidikum’; he meant, ‘the best man among you.’”
I say: What is authentically known is that he said, “Stand up ilā sayyidikum.” He ﷺ addressed a group of the Anṣār with these words when Saʿd ibn Muʿādh came, wounded, riding a donkey—meaning: help him dismount and carry him, not: stand up for him out of reverence. By sayyid he meant their chief and foremost, even though someone else might have been more virtuous than he.
- This ḥadīth is also frequently cited as evidence for the lawfulness of standing for one who enters. Yet a careful look at the context shows that the proof is untenable for many reasons, the strongest being the Prophet’s ﷺ statement, “So help him dismount.” This is a decisive text indicating that the command to stand up to Saʿd was solely to assist him in dismounting because he was injured. For this reason al-Ḥāfiẓ said: “This additional wording undermines the attempt to use the story of Saʿd as proof for the disputed permissibility of standing. Nevertheless, al-Nawawī relied on it in his ‘Book of Standing’ …”