“Hudhayfah—may Allah be pleased with him—was asked about this verse: ‘They have taken their rabbis and monks as lords besides Allah.’ Were they praying to them?” He replied, “No. Rather, they would declare lawful for them what Allah had forbidden, and they would deem it lawful; and they would forbid them what Allah had made lawful, and they would deem it forbidden. Thus, through this, they became ‘lords.’”

It was recorded by ʿAbd al-Razzāq in al-Tafsīr (1/272), al-Ṭabarī, al-Bayhaqī in al-Sunan—the wording is his—and in al-Shuʿab (7/45), and Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr in Jāmiʿ Bayān al-ʿIlm (2/109), through various routes from him.

This is an authentic mursal chain of transmission, for they stated that Abū al-Bakhtarī—whose name was Saʿīd ibn Fayrūz—reporting from Hudhayfah is mursal.

However, al-Ḥāfiẓ mentioned that Ibn Mardawayh transmitted it through another route, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār, from ʿAdī ibn Ḥātim. Thus, taken together, its chains render it good, if Allah Most High wills. Ibn Kathīr indicated in his Tafsīr (2/348) that it is strengthened, though he also attributed it to Aḥmad. Perhaps he meant somewhere other than his Musnad, for I have not found it there, nor has anyone else attributed it to him. Al-Suyūṭī also attributed it to Ibn Saʿd, ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd, Ibn al-Mundhir, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, and Abū al-Shaykh. Al-Ḥāfiẓ attributed it to Ibn Abī Shaybah, Abū Yaʿlā, and al-Bayhaqī in al-Madkhal, through this route—that is, the one found with al-Tirmidhī.

The eminent al-Ālūsī said in Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, following the hadith and Hudhayfah’s report:

“Analogous to this is their saying, ‘So-and-so worships So-and-so,’ when he goes to excess in obeying him. It is thus a metaphor based on likening obedience to worship, or a metonymic figurative usage in which ‘worship’—a particular kind of obedience—is used for obedience in general. The former is more emphatic. It was also said that their taking them as lords was through prostrating to them and the like—acts that are not fitting...”