“You are emigrants wherever you may be.”

It was recorded by al-Ṭaḥāwī (2/298–299) and Aḥmad (3/361–362). Al-Haythamī said (5/252): “I do not know this ʿUmar, but the rest of its narrators are among the narrators of the Ṣaḥīḥ collections.”

I say: Al-Bukhārī, in al-Tārīkh (3/2/172), Ibn Abī Ḥātim (3/1/121), and Ibn Ḥibbān, in al-Thiqāt (3/135), gave him a biographical notice on the authority of this Ibn Ḥarmalah and also Ibn Isḥāq, without mentioning any criticism or accreditation concerning him. They said: He was the brother of Zurʿah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.

It should be noted that Ibn Ḥarmalah narrated from him through Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥuṣayn. This is something they did not mention, and al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar likewise did not notice it in al-Taʿjīl; indeed, he gave him a biographical entry both among those named ʿUmar and among those named ʿAmr.

Moreover, the apparent import of al-Haythamī’s preceding statement is that this Ibn al-Ḥuṣayn was among the narrators of the Ṣaḥīḥ collections, yet I have not found him mentioned in al-Tahdhīb or elsewhere. In al-Bukhārī’s al-Tārīkh and al-Jarḥ wa-l-Taʿdīl (Narrator Criticism and Accreditation) (3/2/317), it states: “Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥuṣayn al-Tamīmī: he narrated from ʿĀʾishah, ʿAwf ibn al-Ḥārith, and ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr; and Ibn Isḥāq narrated from him.” It is therefore possible that, in this hadith, he was attributed to his grandfather, ʿAbd Allāh. And Allah knows best.

Returning to Bedouin life after the Hijrah: Ibn al-Athīr said in al-Nihāyah: “It means returning to the desert and living among the Bedouins after having been an emigrant. Whoever returned after the Hijrah to his former abode without an excuse was regarded by them as being like an apostate.”

I say: Similar to this is tagharrub (going to Western lands): travelling from Muslim lands to lands of the West and disbelief, except out of necessity. Some have even called it Hijrah! This is among the inversions of the realities established by the Sacred Law that