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ilay-hi dhat a yawm in fa-lammā surriya ʿan-hu qāla: (2) “Khudhū ʿan-nī!
(3) Qad jaʿala l-lāh u la-hunna sabīl an . (4a) Al-thayyib u bi-l-thayyib (4b)
wa-l-bikr u bi-l-bikr (5a) Al-thayyib u jald u miʾat in thumm a rajm un bi-l-ḥijāra
(5b) wa-l-bikr u jald u miʾat in thumm a nafy u sana.”
(1a) When [a revelation] descended upon the Messenger of Allāh, may
Allāh bless him and grant him peace, he would be overwhelmed by grief
and his face would grow pallid (1b) One day Allāh sent upon him a
revelation. When he [the Messenger of Allāh] regained his composure, he
said: (2) “Take it from me! (3) Allāh has appointed a way for them. (4) A
non-virgin with a non-virgin and a virgin with a virgin (5a) A non-virgin
[should suffer] one hundred strokes then an execution with stones, (5b) a
virgin [should suffer] one hundred strokes then a year’s banishment”. 114
195
Al-Shāshī 115 relates a similar matn, albeit with some differences. The
most prominent of them is observed in clause 1b, which in al-Shāshī’s
tradition reads, Fa-ūḥiya ilay-hi dhāt a yawm in fa-laqiya dhālika fa-
lammā surriya ʿan-hu qāla (“One day he received a revelation,
whereupon he experienced this [kind of symptoms]. When he regained
his composure, he said”). By using the passive ūḥiya ilay-hi, al-Shāshī
has come with a revelation preamble that sounds much like the preamble
in al-Ṭabarī’s tradition on the authority of Ibn Zurayʿ, whereas Abū
ʿAwāna stands closer to al-Nasāʾī’s variant through Ibn Zurayʿ.
The prophetic dictum that follows the preamble bears resemblance to
the version of Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj in dividing the penal maxim into two
parts (clauses 4a and 4b); and to the version of Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān
in employing the locution rajm un bi-l-ḥijāra. The last feature once again
brings to the fore the possibility of the matn’s going back to a core
version circulated by Saʿīd b. Abī ʿArūba. Nevertheless, the collective
attribution to al-Ṣaghānī, Aḥmad b. Mulāʿib and Yazīd b. Sinān in
addition to its single-strand isnād precludes a more definite conclusion
about the historical roots of this version. One may confidently say only
that it was influenced by the wording of traditions that belong to both the
revelation and the non-revelation cluster.
The third key figure in the Ibn Abī ʿArūba cluster (Diagram 5 p. 192)
is the near-centenarian Baghdādī collector al-Ḥārith b. Abī Usāma (186–
282/802–896), an author of a currently lost Musnad. 116 The earliest
114 Abū ʿAwāna, Musnad, 4:120–1, no. 6249.
115 Al- Shāshī, Musnad, 3:222, no. 1322.
116 A volume of Zawāʾid (Addenda) to the Musnad of al-Ḥārith was published
in 1992. (Al-Haythamī, Bughyat al-Bāḥith ʿan Zawāʼd Musnad al-Ḥārith, ed.
Ḥusayn Aḥmad Ṣāliḥ al-Bākirī, 2 vols. [1st ed., Medina: al-Jāmiʿa al-Islāmiyya bi-