“Nor sit with your knees drawn up in the house while exposed.” In the other edition (no. 1270), an additional corruption was introduced: “Nor run in the house while exposed”!! The ignorant annotator explained it in his note, saying: “Khabab is a manner of running. Al-Nihāyah, 2/3”! I say: Yes, that is indeed the meaning of khabab, but what connection does it have with this passage, and what sense could it possibly have here?! Is this how the text is established by the person in charge of the “General Services and Research Centre”?! Or is the matter as the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “Whoever pretends to have been given what he was not given is like one who wears two garments of falsehood”?!
Second: The annotator of the Muʾassasah edition of al-Iḥsān went to great length in tracing the hadith and attributed it to a number of authors, including Muslim, without drawing attention to the difference between Ibn Ḥibbān’s version and the version of Muslim and others, which contains neither the phrase, “Do not drink with your left hand,” nor the word “exposure”—let alone its opening statement: “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, commanded us to do four things and prohibited us from five.” He thus gave readers the impression that Muslim and the others recorded the hadith in this complete form. Is this how critical editing is done?!
Third: Abū al-Zubayr explained the term ṣammāʾ as placing both the inner and outer sides of one’s waist-wrapper upon one’s shoulder. I say: Perhaps this lends weight to the jurists’ explanation of ṣammāʾ: that one covers oneself in a single garment, wearing nothing else, then lifts one side of it and places it on one’s shoulder, thereby exposing one’s private parts. This is because the narrator of a hadith knows best what he narrates, especially when he is a Successor such as Abū al-Zubayr; for in that case, it is most likely that he received it from the Companion who narrated the hadith, namely Jābir, may Allah be pleased with him. And Allah, Exalted and Most High, knows best.