“I came to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and said: ‘O Messenger of Allah, tell me what is lawful for me and what is forbidden to me.’ He then mentioned it.”

Al-Tahawi also transmitted it in Mushkil al-Athar (4/375) through this chain of transmission, but without the circumstances of the hadith.

I say: Its chain of transmission is authentic; all its narrators are trustworthy and are among the narrators covered in al-Tahdhib.

It is also recorded in the two Sahih collections, the Sunan works, and elsewhere through another route, with the wording: “He prohibited the eating of every fanged beast of prey.”

Its sources are cited in al-Irwaʾ (2552).

It also has a corroborating report from Abu Hurayrah with the wording: “Every fanged beast of prey: eating it is forbidden.”

476 — “Every fanged beast of prey: eating it is forbidden.”

Muslim, Malik, al-Shafiʿi, Ahmad, al-Tahawi, and al-Bayhaqi transmitted it through ʿUbaydah ibn Sufyan, from him.

It also has another route from Abu Hurayrah conveying the same meaning.

Its chain of transmission is good. I have cited its sources in the aforementioned work (2553).

Jurisprudence of the Hadith

This proves that the domestic donkey and every fanged beast among wild animals are forbidden to eat, not merely disliked, as some exegetes of this age have claimed, construing the prohibition as one of mere discouragement.

When he saw the explicit declaration of prohibition in the hadith of Abu Hurayrah, he claimed that it was a narration conveyed by meaning. This is refuted by the fact that, if the narration by meaning was from the Companion—namely Abu Hurayrah—then he knew it better than those who came after him. If he means that it came from someone after him, then this is refuted by its being transmitted with the wording of prohibition through the other route.

This is further affirmed by the fact that Abu Thaʿlabah asked the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, what was lawful for him and what was forbidden. He answered him, saying: “Do not eat ...” This is an explicit text establishing that the prohibition denotes forbiddance, for that was precisely what Abu Thaʿlabah had asked about, and it is not