Al-Bayhaqi and al-Tirmidhi recorded it (2/279), and al-Tirmidhi said: “A good, singular hadith.”
I say: Rather, it is a rejected and weak narration, for ʿUmar ibn Rashid—Abu Hafs al-Yamami—was unanimously deemed weak, and he contradicted ʿAli ibn al-Mubarak in both its chain of transmission and its text, as we have mentioned. As for the chain, he named Abu Salamah in place of ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Yaʿqub. As for the text, he omitted its explanation of “those who stand apart” and added the words: “remembrance lifts ...” Therefore, it is no surprise that Ahmad and others said: “He narrated rejected hadiths from Yahya and others.” For this reason, al-Bayhaqi said immediately afterward: “The first chain is more authentic.”
The hadith has another chain, transmitted by al-ʿAlaʾ ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman, from his father, from Abu Hurayrah, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, was travelling along the road to Mecca when he passed by a mountain called Jumdan. He said: “Proceed; this is Jumdan. Those who stand apart have gone ahead.” They asked: “Who are those who stand apart, O Messenger of Allah?” He said: “The men who remember Allah much and the women who do so.” Muslim (8/63) and al-Bayhaqi (1/313–314) recorded it.
Unfamiliar Expressions in the Hadith:
- “Those who stand apart”: that is, those who are alone. Ibn al-Athir said: “One may say that a person farada bi-raʾyihi (stood alone in his opinion); afrāda, farrada, and istafrāda all mean that he stood alone in it.” Al-Nawawi, may Allah have mercy on him, said: “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, explained them as ‘the men who remember Allah much and the women who do so.’ The underlying sense is: ‘and the women who remember Him’; the pronoun referring to Him has been omitted here, just as it is omitted in the Quran, for conformity with the verse-endings and because the object may be omitted. This explanation is what the hadith means.”