- A third route: through Shahr ibn Ḥawshab, from Ibn ʿUmar. It was recorded by Aḥmad (no. 5007).
I later came across a supporting narration (shāhid) transmitted by Bashīr ibn Ziyād al-Khurāsānī: Ibn Jurayj told us, from ʿAṭāʾ, from Jābir, who said, “I heard the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him…,” and he mentioned the same report.
Ibn ʿAdiyy reproduced it in the biographical entry for this Bashīr in al-Kāmil, remarking, “He is unknown, and there is some objectionable content in his hadith.” Al-Dhahabī added, “Yet he was not deemed wholly unreliable.”
Consider, then, how this narration clarifies what was left general in the earlier report of Abū Umāmah: it shows that the abasement is not attached to farming and cultivation in and of themselves, but to settling down with them and becoming so absorbed in them that one is diverted from striving in the path of Allah. That is what the hadith intends. As for cultivation that is free of such attachment and distraction, it is the subject of the narrations that encourage agriculture. Hence there is no contradiction or problem between the two sets of reports.