A Distortion by Dr. Bashshār Maʿrūf in His Verification of Tahdhīb al-Kamāl! Which Led to a Change in Meaning!

It appears in Tahdhīb al-Kamāl (16/81), verified by Dr. Bashshār Maʿrūf, in the biography of “ʿAbdullāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAqīl”:

“And al-Ḥumaydī said from Sufyān: Ibn ʿAqīl had some weakness in his memory, so I disliked to meet him.”

This is how Dr. Bashshār vocalized it: alqāhu (“meet him”)!

And its meaning then becomes that Ibn ʿUyaynah disliked meeting Ibn ʿAqīl! This is incorrect! This statement of Ibn ʿUyaynah was made after he had already heard from him the ḥadīth of al-Rubayyiʿ.

The correct wording is: “fa karihtu an ulqinnahu” — “so I disliked to prompt him,” from talqīn (prompting). That is, Ibn ʿUyaynah feared that he might prompt Ibn ʿAqīl with part of the ḥadīth that he had come to hear from him, after he had already heard it from Ibn ʿAjlān.

This wording is found correctly in Musnad al-Ḥumaydī, and strangely Dr. Bashshār did not point it out. Instead, in the footnote he referred to al-Jarḥ wa al-Taʿdīl (5/biography 706)!

And it is likewise distorted in the printed edition of al-Jarḥ wa al-Taʿdīl! In it: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (i.e., Ibn Abī Ḥātim) said: ʾAkhbaranā Abū Zurʿah, he said: ʾAkhbaranā al-Ḥumaydī, he said: Sufyān said: “Ibn ʿAqīl had some weakness in his memory, so I disliked to meet him.”

Thus in the printed edition: alqāhu (“meet him”)!

And likewise in the printed edition of Tārīkh Dimashq!

Ibn ʿAsākir said in his Tārīkh (32/262): Abū al-Ḥusayn Hibatullāh and Abū ʿAbdullāh al-Khallāl informed us, they said: Abū al-Qāsim Ibn Manda informed us: Abū ʿAlī authorized [ḥ].

He said: And Abū Ṭāhir ibn Salamah informed us: ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad informed us. They said: Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim Muḥammad ibn Idrīs informed us: My father informed me, he said: I heard Abū Maʿmar al-Qaṭīʿī say: Ibn ʿUyaynah did not praise the memory of Ibn ʿAqīl.

He said: And Abū Zurʿah informed us: al-Ḥumaydī narrated to us, he said: Sufyān said: “Ibn ʿAqīl had some weakness in his memory, so I disliked to meet him.”

And in Abū Bakr al-Ḥumaydī’s Musnad (1/163), no. (342):

He said: Ḥaddathanā Sufyān, he said: Ḥaddathanā ʿAbdullāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAqīl ibn Abī Ṭālib, he said: ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn sent me to al-Rubayyiʿ bint Muʿawwidh ibn ʿAfrāʾ to ask her about the wuḍūʾ of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and he used to perform wuḍūʾ with her, so I came to her and she brought me a vessel measuring a mudd or a mudd and a quarter by the mudd of Banī Hāshim. She said: With this I used to prepare wuḍūʾ water for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, so he would begin by washing his hands three times before putting them into the vessel, then rinse his mouth and nose three times each, wash his face three times, then his hands three times, then wipe his head forward and back, then wash his feet three times. She said: And your cousin came to me and asked me about it, so I informed him. He (Ibn ʿAbbās) said: We only know in the Book of Allah two washings and two wipings. Abū Bakr (al-Ḥumaydī) said: And Sufyān described the wiping for us, so he placed his hands on his forelocks then wiped them forward to his forehead, then raised them and placed them on his forelocks from the middle of his head, then wiped to his nape. Sufyān said: And Ibn ʿAjlān had first narrated it to us from Ibn ʿAqīl from al-Rubayyiʿ, and he added in the wiping: “Then he wiped from his forelocks over his temples until he reached the end of his beard.” So when we asked Ibn ʿAqīl about it, he did not describe the wiping of the temples for us. And since his memory was weak, I disliked to prompt him.

It is also correctly preserved in Ḍuʿafāʾ al-ʿUqaylī (2/299).

And in the printed edition of Tārīkh Ibn ʿAsākir (32/260): “So when we asked Ibn ʿAqīl about it, he narrated the wiping for us, and since his memory was weak, I disliked to meet him.”

I say: The problem is not in Tārīkh Ibn ʿAsākir nor in the book of Ibn Abī Ḥātim, rather the problem lies in the verification. The original in both is ulqinnahu with a nūn instead of a yāʾ.

And in the manuscript copy of Tahdhīb al-Kamāl at Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyyah, the letter after the qāf and before the hāʾ was written without dots above or below. From this, in some copies it came as alqīhi under the assumption that the letter was a yāʾ. So Dr. Bashshār understood it as relating to liqāʾ (meeting) and vocalized it alqāhu! This is a mistake! The correct reading, as I have shown, is with a nūn: ulqinnahu — from talqīn (prompting).

So Sufyān feared prompting him with what he had heard from Ibn ʿAjlān regarding the wiping of the temples, since Ibn ʿAqīl’s memory was weak.

May Allah be pleased with you, O Sufyān, how cautious you were! If it had been someone else, they might have prompted him.

Written by: Khālid al-Ḥāyik

13 Dhū al-Ḥijjah 1431 AH