Khâlid’s alleged marriage to Mâlik’s wife
With the passage of time the incident of Mâlik ibn Nuwayrah became the object of the attention of certain unscrupulous transmitters of history. An obnoxious tail was soon introduced into the story in the form of Mâlik’s wife, who is named as Umm Tamîm bint Minhâl. Khâlid, it was said, was so enamoured of the beautiful Umm Tamîm that he saw fit to slaughter Mâlik and his entire tribe in order to possess her, and barely was the slaughter over when he took her as his own wife.
In an allegation as serious as this one would have expected the party levelling the accusation to produce reliable evidence to support their claim. However, all that is ever produced is fragments of statements by historians. The accusers consistently fail to realise that a quotation is of no value for as long as it cannot be authenticated. While they display great vigour in levelling the accusation and stating their references, complete with volume and page numbers, they conveniently and consistently forget to authenticate those “facts”.
The great imâm ‘Abdullâh ibn al-Mubârak stated a most profound truth when he said:
Isnâd (stating the chain of narration) is part of Dîn. Were it not for isnâd, anyone could have said just what he wished.(14)
A study of the texts wherein reference is made to the story of the Mâlik ibn Nuwayrah reveals that not a single one of them is reported with an uninterrupted chain of narration that consists of reliable authorities. We may confidently say that we have looked at almost all the available material on the issue of Mâlik ibn Nuwayrah, and we have found that they may be classified into two types:
(1) reports in which no mention at all is made of Mâlik’s wife, and
(2) reports in which she is mentioned.
The former type includes material narated via authentic as well as unauthentic chains of narration. As for the latter type (the reports which make mention of Mâlik’s wife), they have been handed down exclusively through highly unreliable chains of narration. They all suffer from two deficiencies: untrustworthy or unknown narrators, and suspicious interruptions in the chain of narration. We might, for example, look at the reports about Mâlik’s wife mentioned in sources like at-Tabarî’s Târîkh and Ibn Hajar’s al-Isâbah:
(1) Khâlid married Umm Tamîm the daughter of Minhâl, and left her till her clean period ended.(15)
This report appears in a long narrative documented by at-Tabarî on the authority of the following chain of narration:
at-Tabarî— (narrrates from)— as-Sarî ibn Yahyâ— (who narrrates from) — Shu‘ayb ibn Ibrâhîm— (who narrrates from)— Sayf ibn ‘Umar— (who narrrates from)— Sahl (ibn Yûsuf)— (who narrrates from)— Qâsim (ibn Muhammad) and ‘Amr ibn Shu‘ayb, who say...
This isnâd is extremely defective, on several counts. Firstly, it runs through the historian Sayf ibn ‘Umar at-Tamîmî, whose extreme unreliabilty is a matter of consensus among the rijâl critics. Ibn Hibbân has summed up their opinions of him in the words: “He narrates forged material from reliable narrators. They (the critics) say he used to forge hadîth.” He adds that Sayf was suspected of zandaqah (secret heresy).(16) Of recent there has been much protest by Shî‘î authors about reliance upon Sayf’s narrations about ‘Abdullâh ibn Saba, (despite the fact that Sayf is not the only historian who mentions Ibn Saba and his role). However, it seems when the very same Sayf narrates historical material in which the Sahâbah y are maligned, a blind eye must be turned to his proven mendacity.
The second problem is with the person who narrates from Sayf, namely Shu‘ayb ibn Ibrâhîm. This person, we are told by Ibn Hajar in Lisân al-Mîzân, was virtually unknown. He quotes Ibn ‘Adî who says: “He is not known. He narrates ahâdîth and historical reports which uncorroborated to a certain extent, and in which there is an element of prejudice against the Salaf (early Muslims). ”(17) Is it in any way acceptable to use information that was handed down by a non-entity such as this to malign a man who was named “the Sword of Allâh” by Rasûlullâh (saw) , and who is one of those of whom it was stated in the Qur’ân:
Those of you who spent (their wealth) before the conquest (of Makkah) are not equal (to the rest). They are greater in status than those who spent thereafter and fought. And all of them have been promised good by Allâh. (al-Hadîd:10)
Khâlid ibn al-Walîd t became Muslim before the conquest of Makkah.
The third point of criticism against this isnâd is the person who appears as Sayf’s direct source: Sahl ibn Yûsuf al-Ansârî. This person, like Shu‘ayb ibn Ibrâhîm, is unknown.18 The same may therefore be said of him as a narrator, and of the nature of his narration in maligning the character of a Sahâbî who sacrificed so much for Islâm, as was said of Shu‘ayb’s narration.
Finally, even if we were to assume, for argument’s sake, that this isnâd is free from all defects right up to Sahl ibn Yûsuf, there remains one crucial problem. The persons who allegedly narrate the story appear here as Qâsim ibn Muhammad and ‘Amr ibn Shu‘ayb. Neither of these two figures were even born at the time when the incident of Mâlik ibn Nuwayrah occured. Whichever way one looks at it, this report simply does not conform to the two most basic conditions for authenticity: reliability of the narrator, and an uninterrupted chain of narration.
Let us now look at another narration in Târîkh at-Tabarî:
(2) ‘Umar told Khâlid: “You enemy of Allâh! You killed a Muslim man and thereafter took his wife. By Allâh, I will stone you.”(19)
The chain of narration on the authority of which this report reached at-Tabarî is as follows: at-Tabarî— (narrrates from)— (Muhammad) ibn Humayd (ar-Râzî)— (who narrrates from) — Salamah (ibn al-Fadl ar-Râzî)— (who narrrates from)— Muhammad ibn Ishâq— (who narrrates from)— Talhah ibn ‘Abdillâh ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahmân ibn Abî Bakr— who says that it used to be Abû Bakr as-Siddîq’s instruction to his armies...
This isnâd too, is defective and unreliable. It is unreliable on account of Muhammad ibn Ishâq, who was a much more truthful historian than Sayf ibn ‘Umar, but who used to commit tadlîs. Tadlîs is when a narrator intentionally omits the name of his direct source and ascribes his information to a source higher up in the chain of narration. Ibn Hibban states about him: “The problem with Ibn Ishâq is that he used to omit the names of unreliable narrators, as a result of which unreliable material crept into his narrations. However, if he makes it clear that he has actually heard from the person whom he states as his source, then his narration is authentic.”(20)
When we look at the way in which Ibn Ishâq has narrated this incident from Talhah ibn ‘Abdillâh ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahmân ibn Abî Bakr, we find that he has not explicitly stated that he heard this information from him. He uses the ambiguous term ‘an, which was a common device used by narrators committing tadlîs. Ibn Ishâq, we are told by Ibn Hajar, was well-known for committing tadlîs by omitting the names of unreliable and unknown persons, and even from narrators who are regarded as unreliable for more serious reasons.(21)
Besides Ibn Ishâq himself, it must also be taken into consideration that Muhammad ibn Humayd ar-Râzî, who appears in the isnâd as at-Tabarî’s direct source, has come under severe criticism from the muhaddithîn. Many of them have outrightly labelled him as an outright liar. He has also been proven to be dishonest in his claim to narrating the Maghâzî of Ibn Ishâq from Salamah ibn Fadl. Some of the muhaddithîn who at one stage entertained a good opinion of him had to change their opinions when it became clear that the man was a shameless forger. One critic expresses his opinion as follows: “I have never seen a natural liar, except for two persons: Sulaymân ash-Shâdhakûnî and Muhammad ibn Humayd. He used to memorise all of his ahâdîth, and his hadîth used to grow longer every day.”(22)
Besides the above, it must not be forgotten that the final source for this narration wasn’t even born when Sayyidunâ ‘Umar t allegedly spoke these words to Sayyidunâ Khâlid (ra). These were events that supposedly took place in the time of Sayyidunâ Abû Bakr (ra) , but the one who tells us about it is his great grandson— three generations later. Like the previous report, this one too, suffers from a huge gap in the chain of narration.
Shî‘î authors have the habit of supplying incidents like this with multiple references. In order to fully convince the uninformed Sunnî reader, they will quote not only at-Tabarî as the source for the incident, but also Ibn Kathîr’s al-Bidâyah wan-Nihâyah, Ibn al-Athîr’s al-Kâmil, etc. They conveniently forget that Ibn Kathîr and Ibn al-Athîr, and like them, most later historians, draw directly from at-Tabarî, and have stated as much in their respective introductions. It is thus of no benefit to quote them as separate references, since all they do is quote at-Tabarî. And as for at-Tabarî himself, he has never claimed all the material in his huge work to be the truth. On the contrary, he states very clearly in his introduction:
Whatever is to be found in this book of mine as quoted from some past source, which the reader finds unacceptable or the hearer deems repugnant for the reason that he does not see any authenticity in it or does not find real meaning in it, let it be known that we are not responsible for it. The one responsible for it would be one of those who transmitted it down to us. We for our part have only reproduced what has been transmitted to us.
Cont'd
