2913 — “If an elderly man and an elderly woman commit adultery, stone them without fail.”
It is reported in hadiths from Umar, Zayd ibn Thabit, Ubayy ibn Kab, and al-Ajma', the maternal aunt of Abu Umamah ibn Sahl.
- As for Umar's hadith, Abu Bakr ibn Abi Shaybah said in al-Musannaf (10/75–76): Ibn Uyaynah narrated to us, from al-Zuhri, from Ubayd Allah, from Ibn Abbas, who said: Umar said: “I fear that, after a long time has passed, people will say, ‘We do not find stoning in the Book of Allah,’ and thus go astray by abandoning an obligation that Allah revealed. Indeed, stoning is a prescribed duty when the offender is married, or evidence is established, or there is pregnancy, or a confession. And I recited: ‘The elderly man and the elderly woman ...’ The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) carried out stoning, and we carried it out after him.”
Ibn Majah (2553) also recorded it through Abu Bakr, as did Muslim (5/116), though he did not give its wording. Al-Nasa'i in al-Kubra (4/273/7156) and al-Bayhaqi (8/211) also recorded it through two other routes from Sufyan ibn Uyaynah, through the same chain.
I say: This chain of transmission is authentic according to the criteria of al-Bukhari and Muslim, and both of them recorded it: al-Bukhari (no. 6829) through Ali ibn Abd Allah, and Muslim through Abu Bakr—as mentioned above—both from Sufyan through the same chain. However, neither of them included the words, “And I recited it ...,” and so on. Nevertheless, al-Bayhaqi attributed it to both of them after narrating it, and al-Suyuti did likewise in al-Durr al-Manthur (5/179–180). Al-Diya al-Maqdisi also indicated this by omitting it from “The Musnad of Umar” in al-Ahadith al-Mukhtarah. I followed them in this in my book al-Irwa' (8/3–4/2338), when I attributed it