Q: How authentic are these two hadiths narrated by Tirmidhi?
- It was narrated from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet ﷺ said: “If I were to command anyone to prostrate to anyone else, I would have commanded women to prostrate to their husbands.”
- It was narrated that Abu Umamah said: God’s Messenger ﷺ said: “There are three whose prayer goes no further than their ears: the runaway slave until he returns, a wife whose husband remains angry with her overnight, and an imam who leads the people in prayer when they object to him doing so.”
A: Both of these hadiths intend to establish some of the husband’s right over his wife, but beyond that they also share a number of similarities with regard to their authenticity: 1) both are narrated via many chains going back to many different companions; 2) both have significant variations in wording across these different versions; 3) all versions and chains of both of these hadiths suffer from weaknesses; and 4) imam Tirmidhi expertly chose the strongest version of each of these hadiths to comment on in his book, and then pointed out the problems with their chains.
The Hadith of Women Prostrating to their Husbands
Imam Tirmidhi narrates this hadith via the following chain:
Muhammad ibn Amr ibn Alqama (al-Ansari al-Madani) – Abu Salama (ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf) – Abu Hurayra. He also mentions that similar hadiths have come with chains going back to nine other Companions, but as many experts have pointed out, they all suffer from major weaknesses, and Tirmidhi’s choice here is the best one.
He then says, ‘It is Hasan but Gharib (isolated) from this source, from the hadith of Muhammad ibn Amr from Abu Salama from Abu Hurayra.’
When Tirmidhi classifies a hadith, the first test for him is whether or not it is Hasan. This is not the same as what later scholars of Hadith define as Hasan (a third category between Authentic (Sahih) and Weak (Daif)). As Tirmidhi explains in his book, Hasan means the hadith passes the first test, so to speak, of not having any immediately obvious reason to reject it straight away. There is no liar in the chain, or someone so weak his hadiths are immediately rejected, or some obvious mistake. It also includes hadiths of those who might be very weak, but the hadith itself has been narrated from other sources that makes the hadith worthy of consideration and further analysis to see if it is authentic. Then, after that, if the narrators pass the second test, in that they are all reliable and trustworthy, Tirmidhi will add ‘Sahih,’ making the narration ‘Hasan Sahih.’ This is what later scholars simply call ‘Sahih.’ If Tirmidhi does not add ‘Sahih,’ and keeps it at ‘Hasan,’ it means one or more of the narrators are not fully reliable in terms of their memory, so the hadith suffers from weakness. In other words, ‘Hasan‘ on its own is a susbset of Weak, in that it has narrators who make mistakes, but not so much that they are immediately thrown away. Rather, they can be taken into consideration.
In this case, that weak narrator is Muhammad ibn Amr, who is truthful but makes many mistakes. In fact, one of his main problems according to the experts is that he often did not remember his sources. As Yahya al-Qattan said when he was asked about him, ‘Do you want a lax or strict judgement?’ The questioner said, ‘strict.’ He said, ‘Then he is not someone you want to narrate from.’ He added that he would often not remember who he took his hadith from and mention a number of them at once, as if to say that he heard it from one of them. Yahya ibn Ma’in said, ‘People have always stayed away from his hadith. He would sometimes narrate something from his teacher Abu Salama, which is his teacher’s own opinion, and later (mistakingly) narrate it as a hadith of the Prophet via Abu Salama from Abu Huraya.’ This problem relates exactly to the hadith at hand, because it comes from this very same problematic chain he was criticised for. There are many quotes from the hadith critics about his weakness and his mistakes, and that is why al-Khalili said, ‘His hadith narrations are written down (for consideration) but cannot be used as proof.’
So Tirmidhi’s comment on this Hadith is that it is ‘Hasan‘, but ‘Gharib‘ (isolated), coming only via this chain with someone who makes mistakes (and has been criticised especially for often making mistakes to do with this very same chain). This means that it is more problematic than simply Hasan.
When you have someone like that who is truthful but makes many mistakes, his narrations are not automatically thrown away, but one cannot rely on something that he alone narrates. And this is exactly the case here, Muhammad ibn Amr alone narrates this hadith going back to Abu Hurayra and so it cannot be accepted.
There is a good study on this hadith by Dr. Ne’maat Muhammad al-Ja’fari, Associate Professor of Hadith and its Sciences at King Saud University (see endnote). In this study she briefly mentions the faults in all other similar hadiths from other Companions (quoting earlier, more detailed research on them), and then focuses on this hadith in particular and why it cannot be accepted as authentic or even as ‘Hasan‘ (by the modern classification of Hasan which is above Weak). Rather this hadith comes from a single weak chain and therefore cannot be accepted or relied upon. She notes that some hadith scholars authenticated this hadith, such as Ibn Hibban, al-Hakim, al-Busiri, al-Haythami, and al-Albani, but correctly noted that all of these scholars are well known for their laxity in authenticating hadiths, whereas none of the true masters of this field have commented on this hadith. (I would add that those master critics who have collections like Malik, Bukhari, Muslim, Nasa’i, etc, did not include it in their books because it does not match their criteria, and Tirmidhi did not classify it as Sahih but rather pointed out its problem).
The Hadith of Women’s Prayer not Being Accepted While their Husbands are Angry with Them.
The case with this hadith is similar to the one above. Tirmidhi comments on it by saying, it is ‘Hasan but Gharib (isolated) from this source, and Abu Ghalib’s name is Hazzoor.’ That is because this Abu Ghalib is a weak and little-known narrator, so he needed to clarify his name (unlike Muhammad ibn Amr from the previous hadith who was at least very famous). Imam Nasa’i said of him: ‘He is weak.’ Ibn Hibban said of him, ‘His hadiths are few and they are munkar (rejected/not recognised from elsewhere). It is not permissible to rely on him except in those instances in which he agrees with trustworthy narrators.’ Ibn Sa’d said, ‘He was weak and his narrations are munkar.’ This makes this hadith even more problematic than the one before it.
This hadith also, like the one before, comes via different versions from different Companions (in this case eight other Companions) all of which are very weak. This one, despite its extreme weakness is the strongest one in which this saying is attributed to God’s Messenger ﷺ. Imam al-Shafi’i wrote in Kitab al-Umm, in the Chapter on the Imam in Prayer, ‘It is said that prayer is not accepted from…’ and then quoted this hadith, then said, ‘I do not memorise this saying from any chain that the hadith experts would accept to establish it (as a hadith.)’
In fact, the only strong chain for this saying makes it not a hadith of God’s Messenger ﷺ but the statement of one of the Followers: Abdullah ibn al-Harith al-Basri (as narrated by Ibn Abi Shaybah in his Musannaf). Therefore this saying might have originally been his own statement and later weak narrators and preachers turned it by mistake into a Hadith.
Endnote: Dr. Ne’maat Muhammad al-Ja’fari is Associate Professor of Hadith and its Sciences at King Saud University (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). She teaches the science of the hidden faults in hadiths at the University and has published a number of books and studies in the field of Hadith. She has written a study on this hadith, called,
(القول المفيد في التعقب على من حسن حديث: لو كنت آمرا شيئا أن يسجد لشيئ دون الله لأمرت المرأة أن تسجد لزوجها)
published by the Journal of al-Iraqia University (مجلة الجامعة العراقية) volume 33, issue 44, pp. 100-119. (Click here to download it as PDF).
She later wrote a larger study on all the weak hadiths she could find in the main Sunni hadith books about the rights of husbands over their wives. She found and analysed twenty-eight such hadiths, summarising there her findings from the first study about Hadith #1 above, and her study included Hadith #2 above as well (although I did not consult it when writing my response above). It is called,
(الأحاديث المعلة في حق الزوج على الزوجة: دراسة حديثية)
She published it with the annual journal of al-Azhar University’s Faculty of Islamic and Arabic Studies for Women, Alexandria Branch (Issue 34, Vol 3, pp. 948 – 1043). (Click here to download it as PDF)
See also the related post: Q: Hadith on Obedience to Husbands.
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