107 — “No people ever violate a covenant without blood-shed breaking out among them; no obscenity ever becomes manifest in a people without Allah unleashing death upon them; and no people ever withhold the zakah without Allah withholding the rain from them.”

Al-Hākim narrated it (2/126) and al-Bayhaqī (3/346) through the channel of Bashīr ibn Muhājir, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Buraydah, from his father.

Al-Hākim said, “Authentic according to the criteria of Muslim,” and al-Dhahabī agreed.

I say: It is just as they maintained, except that Bashīr has been criticized regarding the accuracy of his memorisation; al-Taqrīb describes him as “truthful, yet his ḥadīth are soft.” In addition, he was contradicted in the isnād, for al-Bayhaqī, immediately after citing it, remarked, “This is how Bashīr ibn al-Muhājir reported it.”

He then supplied another chain: from al-Ḥusayn ibn Wāqid, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Buraydah, from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said:

“No people break a covenant except that Allah sets their enemy over them; no obscenity becomes rampant in a people except that Allah seizes them with death; no people cheat in weights and measures except that Allah afflicts them with years of drought; no people withhold the zakah except that Allah withholds rain from the sky; and no people act unjustly in judgment except that strife—and, I think he said, killing—erupts among them.”

I say: This chain is authentic, and although the report is mawqūf (halted at the Companion), it carries the legal weight of being marfūʿ (attributed to the Prophet), for such words cannot stem from personal opinion.

Al-Ṭabarānī also recorded it in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr as marfūʿ by yet another route: from Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Kaysān al-Marwazī, who said, “My father narrated to us, from al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Muzāḥim, from …”