the people, like a black hair on the side of a white bull, or like a white hair on the side of a black bull. I hope that you will constitute a quarter of the inhabitants of Paradise.” So we exclaimed, “Allahu akbar!”

Then he said: “A third of the inhabitants of Paradise.” So we exclaimed, “Allahu akbar!” Then he said: “Half of the inhabitants of Paradise.” So we exclaimed, “Allahu akbar!”

Al-Bukhari (5/241), Muslim (1/139), and Ahmad (3/32–33) narrated it from Abu Saʿid al-Khudri as a hadith traced back to the Prophet—this is al-Bukhari’s wording.

In one of his fatwas, Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah attributed it (3/170, Majmuʿ al-Fatawa) to the two Sahihs with this wording: “Then He will call out in a voice.” This was an overstatement, for Muslim does not contain the wording “voice.” (1)

Abu al-Hasan ibn al-Fadl declared it defective, saying that Hafs ibn Ghiyath alone narrated it from al-Aʿmash with this wording. But al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar refuted him in Fath al-Bari (13/386), saying: “It is not as he said, for ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad al-Muharibi also narrated it from al-Aʿmash. ʿAbd Allah ibn Ahmad recorded it in his book al-Sunnah, from his father, from al-Muharibi.”

I say: It also has a corroborating report from Jabir ibn ʿAbd Allah, in a hadith whose wording includes: “Then He calls out in a voice which the distant hear just as the near hear it …”

It is an authentic hadith. Al-Bukhari cited it without its full chain in his Sahih, and recorded it with its complete chain in Aʿfal al-ʿIbad (p. 89), al-Adab al-Mufrad (970), and elsewhere. Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar regarded it as strong, and I have traced its sources in Zilal al-Jannah fi Takhrij al-Sunnah (no. 514).