However, its chain of transmission is very weak. Al-Bukhārī said of Isḥāq: “His hadiths are rejected.” His father, ʿAbd Allāh, was truthful but made many errors, as al-Ḥāfiẓ stated in al-Taqrīb.

There is another corroborating report narrated from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī as a mursal narration. Yaʿqūb al-Fasawī recorded it (2/750), and Ibn ʿAsākir (1/128) transmitted it through his route. Its chain is authentic, though mursal.

It has also been narrated in the hadith of Muʿādh, containing an addition at its end in response to the man’s words, “And in our Iraq?” This contradicts the Prophet’s established answer, peace and blessings be upon him, in all the routes of the hadith. For this reason, I included it in my other book, al-Ḍaʿīfah (5518), identifying the person accused of fabricating it.

I have gone into some detail in documenting this authentic hadith, mentioning its routes and some of its wordings, because certain innovators hostile to the sunnah and deviating from tawḥīd attack Imam Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the reviver of the call to tawḥīd in the Arabian Peninsula. They apply the hadith to him because he was from the region of Najd, known today by that name, ignorantly—or deliberately overlooking—that it is not what is meant by this hadith. Rather, what is meant is Iraq, as the majority of the hadith’s routes indicate. This was also stated by early scholars, such as Imam al-Khaṭṭābī, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, and others.

They also fail to understand that a person’s being from one of the censured lands does not entail that he himself is censured, if he is righteous in himself; and the reverse is likewise true. How many immoral and wicked people there are in Mecca, Medina, and Syria, while Iraq has produced scholars and righteous people. How wise was Salmān al-Fārisī’s statement to Abū al-Dardāʾ when he invited him to migrate from Iraq to Syria: “The sacred land does not sanctify anyone; rather, it is a person’s deeds that sanctify him.”

Conversely, some among those innovators deny this hadith and declare it fabricated because of what it contains of