your hearts become hardened, as the hearts of those before you became hardened. We used to recite a surah which we compared to Surah Bara'ah in length and sternness, but I have forgotten it, except that I retained from it: “If the son of Adam had two valleys of wealth...” The rest of the hadith.

It was recorded by Muslim (3/100), al-Tahawi (2/419), and al-Bayhaqi in Dala'il al-Nubuwwah (7/156), through two chains from Ali ibn Mushir.

The annotator of al-Tahawi (5/276) impugned it on the basis of certain alleged defects which I do not recognize as originating with him. Rather, he merely imitated the style of that demolisher of the Sunnah to whom I referred above, at the end of my discussion of the preceding hadith of Buraydah (2911). Before that, I had mentioned the annotator’s impugning of the hadith of Buraydah on the basis of the demolisher’s alleged defect. I nearly said that it was the demolisher himself who had impugned it, but I only alluded to this.

Now, however, I am certain that the alleged defects in question came from the “demolisher,” for their invalidity, Allah willing, could not escape the annotator. Among them is his statement: “Abu Harb ibn Abi al-Aswad has no hadith in Sahih Muslim other than this one, and no one besides Ibn Hibban declared him trustworthy!”

The invalidity of this objection is evident. Even supposing that Muslim had not recorded any hadith from him at all, would that constitute a flaw in a narrator if he were trustworthy? His statement, “No one besides Ibn Hibban declared him trustworthy,” is a falsehood of the sort we have repeatedly encountered from him. The leading hadith critic, al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi, explicitly declared him trustworthy, as did al-Hafiz al-Asqalani after him. Muslim’s inclusion of his hadith likewise indicates this, as does the earlier statement of Ibn Sa'd: “He was well known.” A number of trustworthy narrators also transmitted from him, besides his being a Successor.

Consequently, I have come strongly to believe that this annotation was written by the demolisher, and that the annotator in question knew nothing of it. I attributed the annotations of the book to him only because he participated in some of them, and for other reasons known to scholars. The situation itself says: “The name is his, but the work belongs to someone else!”

This hadith of Abu Musa also yields a further point beyond those found in the hadiths—