“It is highly improbable that both a categorical assertion and an expression of doubt should come from one and the same transmitter in a single situation—unless one were to say that he suddenly remembered and therefore spoke with certainty; yet even that is open to objection.” End quote. In the forthcoming report of Abu Hurayrah the number is fixed at one hundred years, but that narration is weak, as noted earlier. (1) Al-Nawawi writes in his Sharh Muslim: “Its sense is that, had the passer-by known the gravity of the sin, he would have preferred to stand for forty (units of time) rather than commit it. The hadith thus conveys an emphatic prohibition and a severe warning.” He adds in al-Majmuʿ (3/249): “If someone prays facing a sutrah, it is unlawful (haram) for anyone to walk between him and the sutrah, though it is not unlawful to pass behind it. Al-Ghazali held that it is merely disliked, not unlawful; the correct—indeed the precise—view is that it is forbidden. This is the position adopted decisively by al-Baghawi and the leading verifiers, who adduced this hadith as proof.” After citing these remarks, Ibn Hajar observes: “This implies that the act should be counted among the major sins.” (2) Reported by al-Bukhari 2/463–464; Muslim 2/58; Malik 1/170 (and through him Imam Muhammad, 148); likewise by Abu Dawud 1/111, al-Nasa’i 1/123, al-Tirmidhi 2/158, al-Darimi 1/329, al-Tahawi in Mushkil al-Athar 1/18, al-Bayhaqi 2/268, and Ahmad 4/169—all via Malik. It is also transmitted by Ibn Majah 1/302 and, through Sufyan al-Thawri, by Muslim and al-Tahawi, both on the authority of Abu al-Nadr, the freedman of Umar ibn Ubayd Allah, from Busr ibn Saʿid.