- “Four people will be brought on the Day of Resurrection: a child, a mentally impaired person, one who died during the interval between messengers, and a decrepit old man. Each will present his case. The Lord, exalted is He, will say to a neck from the Fire, ‘Come forth!’ Then He will say to them, ‘I used to send messengers to My servants from among themselves, and I am a messenger from Myself to you: enter this.’ Those for whom wretchedness has been decreed will say, ‘My Lord, how can we enter it when it was from it that we used to flee?’ Those for whom happiness has been decreed will proceed and rush into it. Then He, exalted is He, will say, ‘You would have been even more vehement in denying and disobeying My messengers.’ Thus, these will enter Paradise, and those will enter the Fire.”
It has been narrated on the authority of Anas ibn Malik, Abu Saʿid al-Khudri, Muʿadh ibn Jabal, al-Aswad ibn Sariʿ, and Abu Hurayrah.
- As for the hadith of Anas, Jarir narrates it from Layth, from ʿAbd al-Warith, from Anas, attributed to the Prophet. Abu Yaʿla transmitted it (3/1044–1045), as did al-Bazzar (pp. 232–233 of its supplementary material).
I say: After attributing it to both of them, al-Haythami said (7/216): “It includes Layth ibn Abi Sulaym, who practised tadlis, while the remaining narrators in Abu Yaʿla’s chain are narrators of the Sahih.” That is what he said! But this is open to objection on two grounds. First, I have not seen anyone accuse this Layth of practising tadlis; rather, he is known to have become confused in his later years. For this reason, the author of Zawaʾid al-Bazzar stated categorically that he was weak. Al-Hafiz said in al-Taqrib: “Truthful; he became confused late in life, and his hadith could not be distinguished, so they were abandoned.”
The second is that ʿAbd al-Warith, Layth’s teacher—who apparently was the freedman of Anas ibn Malik al-Ansari—