“I was with the Prophet when a man was mentioned in his presence, and they said, ‘How incapable he is!’ The Prophet said, ‘You have backbitten your brother.’ They said, ‘Messenger of Allah, we only said what is actually in him.’ He said, ‘If you say what is not in him, then you have slandered him.’”

Al-Haythamī said: “It was narrated by al-Ṭabarānī, and its chain includes ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim, who is weak.” I say: Al-Bayhaqī also recorded it through his route, from al-Muthannā ibn al-Ṣabāḥ, with the chain of transmission given above.

Mālik (3/150), and Abū al-Shaykh (190) from him, narrated from al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥanṭab al-Makhzūmī that a man asked the Messenger of Allah, “What is backbiting?” The Messenger of Allah replied, “To mention of a person what he dislikes to hear.” He asked, “Messenger of Allah, even if it is true?” The Messenger of Allah said, “If you say something false, then that is slander.”

The basic report is found in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (8/21) and elsewhere, through al-ʿAlāʾ ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from his father, from Abū Hurayrah, in a report traced back to the Prophet, with the wording: “Do you know what backbiting is? ...” It has been traced in Naqd al-Kattānī (36), Takhrīj al-Ḥalāl (420), and above at 1419.

2668 — “Adam was a prophet who was spoken to by Allah. There were ten generations between him and Noah, and the messengers numbered three hundred and fifteen.”

Abū Jaʿfar al-Razzāz recorded it in Majlis min al-Amālī (folio 178/1): “He narrated to us:”