Al-Tirmidhī transmitted a statement verbatim from al-Bukhārī but reversed its meaning!

Al-Tirmidhī narrated in al-Jāmiʿ (3/403): He said: Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Baṣrī narrated to us; he said: Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh narrated to us; he said: ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib narrated to us, from Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from Ibn Masʿūd, who said: The Messenger of Allāh ﷺ said:

“The food of the first day is a right; the food of the second day is a sunnah; and the food of the third day is showing off. And whoever shows off, Allāh will make him known for it.”

Abū ʿĪsā said:

“The ḥadīth of Ibn Masʿūd—we do not know it as being raised (to the Prophet) except through the narration of Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh. And Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh has many odd and objectionable narrations.”

He said:

And I heard Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl mention, from Muḥammad ibn ʿUqbah, that Wakīʿ said:
“Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh, despite his nobility, lies in ḥadīth.”

Thus al-Tirmidhī narrated this from al-Bukhārī but reversed its meaning!! The correct wording from al-Bukhārī is contrary to that.

Al-Bukhārī said in al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr (3/360):

“Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ṭufayl al-Bakkāʾī al-Kūfī: he heard from Ibn Isḥāq and al-Mughīrah. Ibn ʿUqbah al-Sadūsī reported from Wakīʿ: ‘He is too noble to lie.’ Dallawayh said: He died in the year 183.”

Ibn Ḥajar said in al-Taqrīb (p. 220):

“Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ṭufayl al-ʿĀmirī al-Bakkāʾī— with the letter bāʾ opened and the kāf doubled—Abū Muḥammad al-Kūfī: truthful, reliable in the accounts of military campaigns. In his narrations from other than Ibn Isḥāq there is some weakness. It is not established that Wakīʿ accused him of lying. He has one place in al-Bukhārī as a corroborating narrator.”

The ḥadīth narrated by al-Tirmidhī above was mentioned by Ibn Ḥajar in Fatḥ al-Bārī (9/243), where he said:

“And its shaykh—meaning Ziyād—narrates from ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, and Ziyād’s hearing from him was after his confusion (ikhtilāṭ); this is its defect.”

Written by: Khālid al-Ḥāyik
16/6/2008 CE