“I saw the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, running between al-Safa and al-Marwah, saying: ‘No one crosses al-Abtah except at a run.’”

Al-Nasa’i also transmitted it (2/42) from Hammad, from Budayl, from al-Mughirah ibn Hakim, with similar wording. I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission; all its narrators are trustworthy. Shaybah’s slave woman who bore him a child was Umm Uthman bint Sufyan, as stated by al-Tabarani and others. The material enclosed in square brackets is an addition found in one of Ahmad’s two versions. It is authentic, owing to Hammad ibn Zayd’s corroborating narration in al-Nasa’i.

Al-Haythami was both remiss and mistaken when he included the hadith in al-Majma‘ (3/248) and said: “It was transmitted by al-Tabarani in al-Kabir, and its narrators are the narrators of the Sahih.” His omission is obvious. His error was that he assumed none of the six hadith compilers had transmitted it, and so he included it.

2438 — “No man is approached by his dependent, asking him for some of what he possesses in surplus, and then refuses it to him, without a serpent being summoned for him on the Day of Resurrection, licking at the surplus that he withheld.”

It was transmitted by Abu Dawud (5139), al-Nasa’i in al-Sunan al-Kubra (10/2), and Ahmad (5/3 and 5), from Bahz ibn Hakim, from his father, from his grandfather, in a marfu‘ report. I say: Its chain is good. Abu Dawud does not include the words, “licking at.”

Al-Qamus states: “Lamaza means to trace with one’s tongue the lumazah—pronounced with an initial u-vowel—the food remaining in the mouth; to put out one’s tongue and wipe one’s lips; or to follow food and taste it, just as talammaza does in all these senses.”