and they began slipping away and rising to leave, until only a group remained. He said, “How many of you are there?” They counted themselves, and there were twelve men and one woman. He then said:

“By Him in Whose Hand is my soul, if the last of you had followed the first, the valley would have burst into flames around you.”

Then Allah, the Exalted, revealed: “And when they see merchandise ...”—the verse.

I said: This is a mursal report with an authentic chain of transmission. All its narrators, apart from Bishr—namely Ibn Mu‘adh al-‘Aqadi, who was blind—are trustworthy narrators of the two Shaykhs. Abu Hatim said of him (2/368/1417): “His hadith is acceptable; he is truthful.”

Ibn Hibban included him in al-Thiqat (The Trustworthy Narrators) (8/144) and said: “Ibn Khuzaymah and our shaykhs narrated from him. He died in 245 AH, or shortly before or after it.”

Note: The following occurs in Fath al-Bari (2/424):

“It occurs in al-Tabari’s and Ibn Abi Hatim’s Exegeses, with an authentic chain of transmission to Abu Qatadah, who said ...”

He then cited the hadith.

I say: This is how “Abu Qatadah” appears there! The author of The Liberation of Women in the Era of the Message (2/182) likewise quoted it from Fath al-Bari. It is a typographical error; the correct wording is “Qatadah,” without the teknonymic prefix “Abu.” This is supported by the fact that it appears correctly in two other places in Fath al-Bari. The first is in the Book of Exegesis, where he says (8/644):

“Al-Tabari records it through the route of Qatadah ...”

The other is in the Book of Friday, one page before the first-cited passage (2/423), where he says:

“Al-Tabarani records a mursal report from Qatadah!”