her said: “Messenger of Allah, I am the one.” He said to the woman: “Go, for Allah has forgiven you,” and he spoke kindly to the man. It was then said: “Prophet of Allah, will you not stone him?” He then mentioned the statement cited above.
Ibn al-Zubayr thus explicitly stated that the prescribed legal punishment was not carried out on the man who confessed, and this is correct. Asbat ibn Nasr narrated it from Sammak with similar wording, as follows:
“A man assaulted a woman in the darkness before dawn as she was making her way to the mosque. She called for help from a man who passed by her, and her assailant fled. Then a group of men passed by her, and she called for help from them. The man from whom she had sought help caught up with her, while the other man outpaced them and escaped. They brought him, leading him to her, and he said: ‘I am only the one who came to your aid; the other man has gone.’ They brought him to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and she told him that he had assaulted her. The people also informed him that they had found him running. He said: ‘I was only coming to her aid against her assailant, but these men caught up with me and seized me.’ She said: ‘He is lying; he is the one who assaulted me.’ The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘Take him away and stone him.’
“A man then stood up from among the people and said: ‘Do not stone him; stone me, for I am the one who committed the deed.’ Thus he confessed. The three were then gathered before the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him: the one who had assaulted her, the man who had answered her call for help, and the woman. He said: ‘As for you, Allah has forgiven you,’ and he spoke kindly to the man who had answered her call. Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, said: ‘Stone the one who confessed to adultery.’ The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘No, for he has repented to Allah with a repentance such that—he said, I believe—if the people of Madinah, or the people of Yathrib, had repented in that way, it would have been accepted from them.’ So he released them.”
Although Asbat ibn Nasr has been criticised with regard to his retention, Muslim relied on him, and al-Bukhari said of him: “Truthful.” Others declared him weak, but he is acceptable in supporting and corroborating transmissions. Thus, his narration lends greater weight to Ibn al-Zubayr’s narration over that of al-Firyabi from Sammak. And Allah knows best.
Al-Bayhaqi also transmitted this narration from Asbat (8/285), then mentioned Isra’il’s narration