the aspect of promise, for that is what is at issue, since it cannot be understood according to its apparent meaning, as stated earlier. It is as though Ibn Mas‘ud had not received Jābir’s hadith, which Muslim recorded with the wording:

“It was said: ‘O Messenger of Allah, what are the two inevitable outcomes?’ He said: ‘Whoever dies without associating anything with Allah will enter Paradise, and whoever dies associating anything with Allah will enter the Fire.’” ...

It was likewise recorded by Abu ‘Awanah (1/18) and Ahmad (3/391).

I say: It has occurred to me that this statement of Ibn Mas‘ud closely resembles Ibn ‘Umar’s statement in the tashahhud, after the testimony: “And I added to it: He alone, without partner...” This addition is established in the tashahhud formulas of more than one of the Companions (1). It therefore appears that they made these statements in reliance upon other Companions who had heard this from the Prophet, peace be upon him, while they themselves did not attribute it to the Prophet, peace be upon him. This may be indicated, in Ibn Mas‘ud’s case, by his statement in the previously cited narration of ‘Asim: “I did not hear it from the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him.”

Perhaps this is preferable to the interpretation that he said it by deduction, relying on the implication of the wording. And Allah knows best.

As for the later al-Hafiz, he was Imam al-Suyuti. In al-Jami‘ al-Kabir (2/835), he cited the report attributed to Ibn Mas‘ud, stating: “From Ibn Mas‘ud, as reported by Ahmad, al-Bukhari, and Muslim; from Abu Ayyub, as reported by Ahmad, al-Darimi, al-Tabarani, and al-Baghawi; from Abu al-Darda’, as reported by Ahmad, al-Bazzar, Ibn Khuzaymah, al-Nasa’i, and Abu Nu‘aym in al-Hilyah; and from Abu Sa‘id, as reported by the four Sunan compilers.”

Thus, he gave the impression that the hadith is attributed to the Prophet in the two Sahihs, just as it is in the works of the others. He further compounded this misleading impression in his other work, al-Jami‘ al-Saghir, where he abridged the source references and mentioned it only through Ibn Mas‘ud’s narration, using the sigla for Ahmad and the two Sahih compilers.