“When I said, ‘How could this possibly cover what I owe, Messenger of Allah?’ the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, took it and turned it over on his tongue. Then he said, ‘Take it and pay them in full from it.’”
- “The food most beloved to Allah is that which many hands share.”
Abu Ya‘la al-Mawsili narrated it in his Musnad (115/1), as did Abu al-Hasan al-Sukkari al-Harbi in the second [part] of al-Fawa’id (160/2), Abu al-Qasim Ibn al-Jarrah, the vizier, in “the Seventh of the Second [Part] of al-Amali” (13/1), and Abu Nu‘aym in Akhbar Isfahan (2/96), through ‘Abd al-Majid ibn Abi Rawwad, from Ibn Jurayj, from Abu al-Zubayr, from Jabir, in a report attributed to the Prophet.
Ibn ‘Adi narrated it through this same route (253/2) and said: “This hadith is not preserved, although Ibn Abi Rawwad is careful in his narrations from Ibn Jurayj.”
I say: Ibn Jurayj and Abu al-Zubayr both practised tadlis and narrated it using ambiguous wording; and ‘Abd al-Majid ibn Abi Rawwad is the son of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Abi Rawwad. Al-Hafiz said: “He is truthful but makes mistakes.” Therefore, al-Hafiz al-‘Iraqi’s statement in al-Takhrij (2/326), “Its chain of transmission is good,” is itself not good. Al-Mundhiri said in al-Targhib (3/121): “Abu Ya‘la, al-Tabarani, and Abu al-Shaykh in Kitab al-Thawab all narrated it through ‘Abd al-Majid ibn Abi Rawwad, who has been declared reliable; yet the hadith contains an objectionable feature.”
I have found a corroborating report for it from the hadith of Abu Hurayrah. Abu Nu‘aym narrated it in Akhbar Isfahan (2/81), through Miqdam ibn Dawud al-Misri: al-Nadr ibn ‘Abd al-Jabbar narrated to us; Ibn Lahi‘ah narrated to us, from ‘Ata’, from Abu Hurayrah, in a report attributed to the Prophet.