- “The believer wears down his devils just as one of you wears down his camel while travelling.”
Ahmad narrated it (2/380), saying: Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd related to us: Ibn Lahīʿah related to us, from Mūsā ibn Wardān, from Abū Hurayrah, who attributed it to the Prophet.
I say: This is a good chain of transmission, for Ibn Lahīʿah’s hadith are authentic when narrated by Qutaybah, as I have stated more than once.
Mūsā ibn Wardān was truthful, as al-Dhahabī and others said. His hadith have appeared previously; see, for example, volume one, nos. 225 and 467.
Al-Suyūṭī also attributed the hadith in Al-Jāmiʿ to al-Ḥakīm and Ibn Abī al-Dunyā in The Devil’s Snares. Al-Manāwī said:
“Al-Haythamī—following his teacher, al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī—said: ‘It contains Ibn Lahīʿah.’ I say: It also contains Saʿīd ibn Shuraḥbīl, whom al-Dhahabī included in The Weak Narrators and counted among the unknown narrators. In The Balance, Abū Ḥātim said: ‘Unknown.’ Ibn Maʿīn declared Mūsā ibn Wardān weak, while Abū Dāwūd deemed him trustworthy!”
I say: This Ibn Shuraḥbīl is not mentioned in Ahmad’s chain of transmission, contrary to the impression conveyed by al-Manāwī’s words.
The sounder view concerning Mūsā ibn Wardān is that he was of middling standing and that his hadith are good, as stated above. This is indicated by the aforementioned statement of al-Dhahabī. Similar to this, or close to it, is al-Ḥāfiẓ’s statement in Al-Taqrīb: “Truthful, though he may sometimes err.”
Then I saw that Shaykh Aḥmad al-Ghumārī, in his book Al-Mudāwī, launched a