Corresponding to the aforementioned misconception is the statement of Shaykh al-Kattānī in al-Risālah al-Mustaṭrafah, after mentioning Sunan al-Nasāʾī (p. 10):

“The intended work is the Lesser Sunan; it is the one counted among the principal collections, and it is the one upon which scholars based their aṭrāf indexes and works on narrators—not the Major Collection—contrary to those who maintain that the latter is intended.”

This is true only of Dhakhāʾir al-Mawārīth by Shaykh al-Nābulusī. And Allah knows best.

3278—“You have done well. Leave her until she recovers.” That is, concerning a female servant who had committed fornication and had only recently given birth.

Muslim (5/125), al-Dāraquṭnī (3/159–160), and al-Bayhaqī (8/244–245) narrated it through Isrāʾīl, from al-Suddī, from Saʿd ibn ʿUbaydah, from Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who said: ʿAlī—may Allah be pleased with him—delivered a sermon to us and said:

“O people, whenever a male or female slave commits fornication, administer the prescribed penalty to them.” Then he said: “A female servant of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, gave birth as a result of fornication. He sent me to flog her, but I found that she had only recently given birth. I feared that, if I flogged her, I would kill her. So he said,” and then mentioned the foregoing.

The additional wording is found in Muslim and others through another route from al-Suddī. It is cited in abridged form in al-Irwāʾ (7/360), without the words, “Leave her …”; it was on account of this wording that I included it here.

Al-Suddī was Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Karīmah—al-Suddī al-Kabīr. There is some minor criticism of him; hence al-Dhahabī said in al-Kāshif: “His hadith is good. Abū Ḥātim said: ‘His reports are not to be adduced as evidence.’”