this obstinate, truth-denying man?! I can only warn him with the saying of Allah, Exalted is He:
“Whoever opposes the Messenger after guidance has become clear to him, and follows a path other than that of the believers, We shall leave him to that which he has chosen and consign him to Hell—what an evil destination!” *
- “The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, gave me some dates, and I put them in one of our baskets. We hung it from the ceiling of the house, and continued to eat from it until, in the end, the people of Syria got to it when they raided Medina.”
Aḥmad transmitted it in al-Musnad (2:324): Abū ʿĀmir narrated to us: Ismāʿīl—that is, Ibn Muslim—narrated to us, from Abū al-Mutawakkil, from Abū Hurayrah, who said: ... and he mentioned it.
I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission. All its narrators are trustworthy and are narrators of Muslim. Abū ʿĀmir was ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAmr al-Qaysī al-ʿAqadī.
Abū al-Mutawakkil was named ʿAlī ibn Dāwūd al-Nājī. He was unanimously regarded as trustworthy, and al-Bukhārī and Muslim, as well as others, relied upon him. The scholars of biography have recorded that he narrated from a number of Companions besides Abū Hurayrah, who died in 59 AH, such as ʿĀʾishah—may Allah be pleased with her—who died two years before him; not to mention others who died later, such as Ibn ʿAbbās, Jābir, and Umm Salamah—may Allah be pleased with them all. Al-Tirmidhī transmitted from him a hadith from ʿĀʾishah with the wording:
“The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, stood reciting a verse from the Quran.”
He then said (2:100/448):
“A good, singular hadith by this route.”
In his terminology, this means that it is strong in itself, as is clear to those familiar with his book. Al-Nasāʾī likewise transmitted from him another hadith in ʿAmal al-Yawm wa-al-Laylah (531–532).