ʿĀʾishah said: “I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, may my father and mother be sacrificed for you! Does our Lord, Exalted is He, laugh?’ He replied, ‘By Him in whose Hand is Muhammad’s soul, He indeed laughs.’
“I then said, ‘If He laughs, we shall not be deprived of goodness from Him.’”
Ibn Khuzaymah also recorded it (p. 153), as did Ibn ʿAdī (3/924) and al-Khaṭīb in al-Tārīkh (13/44), through the route of Mūsā ibn Khāqān Abū ʿImrān al-Naḥwī, who said: Salm ibn Sālim al-Balkhī narrated to us…
I say: This is a very weak chain of transmission. Khārijah ibn Muṣʿab is abandoned, as stated in al-Taqrīb. Salm ibn Sālim al-Balkhī is weak; he has an entry in al-Lisān. In conclusion, the hadith is good in my view when its two routes are taken together. Perhaps this is what Ibn Taymiyyah meant when he described it as “a good hadith” in al-ʿAqīdah al-Wāsiṭiyyah.
Unlike Ibn al-Qayyim, who declared the hadith authentic in its entirety in Zād al-Maʿād, under “The Delegations,” and said: “This is a momentous and noble hadith; its majesty, magnificence, and greatness proclaim that it has issued from the niche of Prophethood…”
I say: He then mentioned the imams who narrated it, but did not address the unknown narrators among its transmitters. Hadiths are not declared authentic through rhetorical statements of that kind.
Unfamiliar word in the hadith:
- “His changing [their condition]”: In Sharḥ al-Qāmūs, it states: “Ghayr derives from the changing of a condition. It is a noun meaning severance and reproach; it may also be a plural, whose singular is ghayrah.”