JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

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Pavel Pavlovitch
faithfully a core variant that goes to al-Ḥārith b. Abī Usāma. Given the
overlap of the revelation preamble, such possibility may not be excluded.
The evidence of the remaining part of the tradition is ambiguous. Ibn
Manda has chosen to remove from his matn the entire penal maxim, save
for the opening exclamation Khudhū ʿan-nī! Since Abū ʿAwāna has a
collective isnād, which cannot be used as corroborative evidence, while
Ibn Manda cites an incomplete matn, which is also of little utility, one is
left with the traditions of Abū Nuʿaym and al-Bayhaqī. In this case al-
Ḥārith might seem as a (S)PCL, albeit a suspicious one because of the
spider branches above his tier. Furthermore, al-Ḥārith is separated from
Ibn Abī ʿArūba by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. ʿAṭāʾ. Although one may point to
197
the possibility of al-Ḥārith’s having obtained from ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b.
ʿAṭāʾ a written copy of Ibn Abī ʿArūba’s alleged Muṣannaf, 120 the
single strand does not allow us to judge about the matn of the tradition at
the time of Ibn Abī ʿArūba, but rather only about its wording in ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb’s written source, which may have undergone later redactions.
In the traditions of Abū Nuʿaym and al-Bayhaqī, the penal maxim is
similar to that in the tradition via al-Ṣaghānī, Aḥmad b. Mulāʿib and
Yazīd b. Sinān. In each case, the matn reveals traces of both the Shuʿba
b. al-Ḥajjāj and al-Qaṭṭān matns. On the other hand, we have seen that
the penal maxim in the variants through Yazīd b. Zurayʿ is similar to the
corresponding part of the non-revelation tradition associated with
Hushaym b. Bashīr. May one of these variants be traced back to Ibn Abī
ʿArūba?
An answer may be sought in the considerable number of single-strand
isnāds that make up the Ibn Abī ʿArūba cluster (Diagram 5, p. 192). The
maxims cited by Ibn Ḥanbal (no. 22734), 121 Muslim 122 and Ibn
120 For more on Ibn Abī ʿArūba’s Muṣannaf, see Schoeler, “Oral Tora and
Ḥadīṯ,” in idem, The Oral and the Written in Early Islam, translated by Uve
Vagelpohl, ed. James E. Montgomery (London and New York: Routledge, 2006),
114–5.
121 Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 37:402–3, no. 22734; cf. ibid., 37:388, no. 22715 with
slight changes in 1a, where Ibn Ḥanbal describes the symptoms of revelation with
the following words: idhā nazala ʿalay–hi l-waḥy aththara ʿalay–hi karb un li–
dhālika wa-tarabbada la–hu wajh u –hu (When a revelation came upon him, he
would be affected by grief and his face would grow pallid).
122 Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 11:273, no. 1690.