al-Ibara al-Mukhtasara fi Illat Hadith Inna Hadhihi al-Hushush Muhtadara
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- al-Ibara al-Mukhtasara fi Illat Hadith Inna Hadhihi al-Hushush Muhtadara
al-Ibara al-Mukhtasara fi Illat Hadith Inna Hadhihi al-Hushush Muhtadara (The Concise Statement on the Defect of the Hadith "Indeed, These Privies Are Inhabited") is a specialized hadith treatise by contemporary Iraqi scholar Abd al-Qadir al-Muhammadi, dedicated to examining the authenticity and transmission defects (ilal) of the prophetic supplication uttered before entering the privy .
Subject and Scope
The treatise investigates the narration: إن هذه الحشوش محتضرة، فإذا دخل أحدكم الخلاء، فليقل: أعوذ بالله من الخبث والخبائث ("Indeed, these privies are visited [by devils]; so when one of you enters the privy, let him say: I seek refuge in Allah from male and female devils") . The author evaluates its transmission through three Companions: Anas ibn Malik, Zayd ibn Arqam, and Abdullah ibn Abbas .
Method and Textual Analysis
Narration of Anas ibn Malik
The author establishes that the preserved and authentic (sahih) version of the hadith of Anas is the transmission of Abd al-Aziz ibn Suhayb, documented by al-Bukhari, Muslim, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abu Dawud, and others, which records the command to seek refuge without the introductory clause إن هذه الحشوش محتضرة ("Indeed, these privies are visited") . Other chains attributed to Anas that include this additional phrase—such as those through Qatadah ibn Di'ama, Ismail ibn Muslim from al-Hasan al-Basri, or Hisham ibn Hassan from al-Hasan mursalan—are demonstrated to be defective (ma'lula) .
Narration of Zayd ibn Arqam
The treatise devotes its primary critique to the transmission of Zayd ibn Arqam through Qatadah, highlighting severe disruption (idtirab) in its chains:
- The path of Shu'bah ibn al-Hajjaj: The established (mahfuz) transmission from Shu'bah across the vast majority of his leading students—including Muhammad ibn Ja'far, Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi, al-Nadr ibn Shumayl, and Khalid ibn al-Harith—runs from Qatadah from al-Nadr ibn Anas from Zayd ibn Arqam . The variant transmission of Isa ibn Yunus, who placed al-Qasim ibn Awf al-Shaybani in the chain instead of al-Nadr, is characterized as an isolated error, especially since Shu'bah strongly criticized al-Qasim and avoided narrating from him .
- The path of Sa'id ibn Abi Arubah: The preserved path among his most reliable students (such as Yazid ibn Zuray' and Abda ibn Sulayman) is from Qatadah from al-Qasim ibn Awf from Zayd ibn Arqam . The author notes that Sa'id suffered from memory confusion (ikhtilat) in his later years, and the corroboration by Sa'id ibn Bashir is deemed unviable due to the latter's weakness in transmitting from Qatadah and probable reliance on Ibn Abi Arubah's flawed notes .
Narration of Ibn Abbas
The path attributed to Ibn Abbas is identified as being recorded by Ibn Hibban in Kitab al-Majruhin and Ibn Adi in al-Kamil fi Du'afa al-Rijal under the entry of Ahmad ibn al-Abbas al-Hashimi, who categorized it among his repudiated (munkar) narrations .
Scholarly Assessments and Reception
The treatise reviews classical and contemporary rulings on the hadith:
- Al-Bukhari suggested that Qatadah may have heard the report from both al-Nadr ibn Anas and al-Qasim ibn Awf, though he passed no definitive judgment on its overall soundness .
- Al-Tirmidhi explicitly declared the isnad of Zayd ibn Arqam's hadith to be afflicted by idtirab .
- Authorities such as al-Bazzar, al-Daraqutni, and al-Dhahabi preferred Shu'bah's transmission through al-Nadr ibn Anas over the path of al-Qasim ibn Awf .
- Later and contemporary scholars who authenticated both routes include Ibn Hibban, al-Hakim al-Naysaburi, Mughlatay, Nasir al-Din al-Albani, Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut, and Bashshar Awwad Ma'ruf .
- The author critically engages with Maher al-Fahl's preference for the path of Sa'id ibn Abi Arubah, rejecting it as contrary to early critical methodology .
The work concludes that the authentic prophetic wording is solely the supplication narrated by Abd al-Aziz ibn Suhayb from Anas without the prefatory phrase mentioning that privies are inhabited, while the chain of Zayd ibn Arqam remains fundamentally disrupted .
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