JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

JAIS
Pavel Pavlovitch
201
otherwise serves to introduce the notion that the following prophetic
dictum is divinely inspired:
(1a) Anna l-nabī, ṣalʿam, kāna idhā nazala ʿalay-hi l-waḥy u kuriba la-hu
wa-tarabbada wajh u -hu (1b) wa-idhā surriya ʿan-hu qāla
(1a) When a revelation descended upon the Prophet, may Allāh bless him
and grant him peace, he would be overwhelmed by grief and his face
would grow pallid (1b) When he [the prophet] regained his composure, he
said
The only residue of clause 1b is the locution fa-idhā surriya ʿan-hu.
Due to the removal of the words stating that one day Allāh sent upon the
Prophet a revelation, clause 1b sounds as an odd interjection between
clause
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1a, which describes the symptoms of revelation in generic terms,
and the dual-penalty dictum, which may only by a stretch of imagination
be understood as a specific instance of divinely revealed words. The
obvious narrative rupture in clause 1b betrays either a redactional
intervention in a matn that already contained the entire revelation
preamble, or an early stage of transformation of the non-revelation
tradition into its revelation counterpart.
Whereas the revelation preamble is identical in the traditions of Ibn
Ḥanbal, Ibn al-Mundhir and al-Fākihī, which points to a common source
that may be hypothetically identified with Ḥammād b. Salama, the same
may hardly be said about the prophetic dictum. To the best of my
knowledge, Ibn Ḥanbal is the only author of a surviving collection
according to whom the Prophet exclaimed Khudhū ʿan-nī! not two, but
three times (thalāth a mirār). The three-fold repetition is a sign of later
fictionalization of the narrative, but it leaves us wondering about the
wording of the original matn. As Ibn al-Mundhir repeats the exclamation
only twice, while relying on the same lower part of the isnād, to wit,
Ḥammād b. Salama on the authority of Qatāda b. Diʿāma and Ḥumayd
al-Ṭawīl, one may imagine that Ibn Ḥanbal had the dual-repetition
formula before his eyes.
Ibn Ḥanbal’s clauses 4 and 5 ([4a] al-thayyib u bi-l-thayyib [4b] wa-lbikr
u bi-l-bikr [5a] al-thayyib u jald u miʾat in wa-l-rajm u [5b] wa-l-bikr u
jald u miʾat in wa-nafy u sana) call to mind the early tradition of Shuʿba
(the two-part-clause structure of the penal maxim), and its subsequent
redaction by Hushaym b. Bashīr (the use of genitive compounds in
clause 5). Unlike Ibn Ḥanbal, Ibn al-Mundhir and al-Fākihī prefer a matn
in which clause 4 (al-thayyib u bi-l-thayyib i wa-l-bikr u bi-l-bikr) is
removed and apparently merged with clause 5. In so doing they have