through the hadith of Abu Sa‘id, as will follow. Yet it conflicts with the hadith under discussion, especially with the version from Thabit ibn Wada‘ah that al-Bukhari—may Allah have mercy on him—regarded as stronger, for it reports that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “He neither instructed us to eat them nor forbade us.” Rather, it corresponds exactly with the hadith of Ibn ‘Umar.

Admittedly, it appears to conflict with the instruction to overturn the cooking pots, reported in some of al-A‘mash’s routes, as mentioned above; for this entails a prohibition on eating them, particularly since it states that they were hungry. Ibn Hibban answered this by saying after the hadith (7/340, al-Ihsan): “By this, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, intended to deter them from eating spiny-tailed lizards. The unstated reason was that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, found them distasteful—not that eating them is forbidden.”

This clarifies the ambiguity concerning the chain of transmission. As for the differences in wording, they are evident from the previously mentioned reports, some being longer and others shorter. Such variation is minor and excusable, according to the principle that an addition narrated by a trustworthy reporter is accepted. But the significant point is the instruction to overturn the cooking pots mentioned shortly before. It appears that there is no room to include it under the aforementioned principle, for the following reasons:

First: the narrators of al-A‘mash’s hadith did not agree upon it.

Second: it is not mentioned at all in the other routes from Zayd ibn Wahb. Indeed, some of them contain what contradicts it—namely, the route of Husayn ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, which al-Bukhari regarded as stronger and whose authenticity al-Hafiz explicitly affirmed. It states: “He neither instructed them to eat them nor forbade them.”