Q: I was asked about a hadith stating that in the future there will come women who dress inappropriately, and that we should “curse them, for they are cursed.”
A: This is the hadith of Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As which is narrated by imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal in his Musnad and by al-Tabarani in al-Mu’jam al-Awsat:
“There will be among the last of my Ummah men…..whose wives are dressed yet naked, on their heads like the humps of lean Bactrian camels. Curse them for they are cursed. If you (oh Muslims) will be succeeded by another nation, your wives will become their servants in the same way that the women of previous great nations have served your wives.”
There are four main problems with this hadith, as will be explained below:
- Its chain is weak, and it is considered the mistake of an unreliable narrator.
- It attributes this hadith to God’s Messenger ﷺ when in fact Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As took it as a teaching from Jewish religious texts.
- The last part “Curse them…” until the end is a munkar, rejected addition by the weak narrator in this chain. Also, God’s Messenger ﷺ would never tell his followers to curse anyone from his ummah.
- Within this rejected addition, the part about the wives of the Muslims supposedly being served by women from other great nations at the time of God’s Messenger ﷺ is anachronistic, and reflects the fact that these words were added after the Muslim conquests when almost all Muslim households had servants who were captured during the Muslim conquests of the great previous nations.
As we have stated above, this hadith was narrated by al-Tabarani in al-Mu’jam al-Awsat, which, as is well known, is not just a hadith collection, but is dedicated to narrations that are gharib (come from only a single source), here meaning mostly mistakes whose source Tabarani intends to point out. Al-Tabarani comments on this saying,
“This hadith only goes back to Abdullah ibn Amr through this chain. The only person who narrated it is Abdullah ibn Ayyash.” (al-Mu’jam al-Awsat, vol. 9, p. 131, hadith number 9331).
Abdullah ibn Ayyash is considered truthful but weak (as mentioned by Abu Hatim, al-Nasa’i, and Abu Dawud). Al-Tabarani is indicating that this hadith is unique because it comes from him, and considering that he is not strong, such a narration would be considered one of his mistakes.
Now, when Tabarani states that this hadith (back to Abdullah ibn Amr) only comes from Abdullah ibn Ayyash, he means as a hadith of God’s Messenger ﷺ. This is because this is actually narrated with an authentic chain back to Abdullah ibn Amr in which it is his own saying, stating that he found it in a religious text.
Ibn Abi Shaybah narrated with an authentic chain back to Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As that he said:
We find in God’s revealed book a description of two types of people who will come to be at the end of time, and who will be in the Fire: 1) men with whips like cow tails who use them to hit people who have done no wrong, and who only eat impure food; 2) and women who are dressed yet naked, who sway and make others sway toward them. They will not enter Paradise nor even smell its perfume from afar.
Musannaf ibn Abi Shaybah, Kitab al-Fitan, no 40543.
This more authentic chain does not attribute this prophecy to God’s Messenger Muhammad ﷺ, and also does not contain the rejected addition of “curse them for they are cursed” or the anachronistic description of the Muslim community after the conquests. Now we know that Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As could not have meant the Qur’an in this narration because no such thing is found in the Qur’an, but it is also well known that Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As used to study Jewish religious texts that he came across during the conquests and was well versed in many of their teachings. In this case, he either took this from a Jewish text directly or from the Jewish convert to Islam, Ka’b al-Ahbar. We know this because this teaching is also narrated back to Ka’b al-Ahbar where he uses the same exact words,
“In God’s revealed book there is a description of people called al-Amalah who hold in their hands whips that look like cow tails. These people will not even smell the perfume of Paradise.”
(Also narrated by Ibn Abi Shaybah in his Musnnaf).
This is also narrated in an authentic chain back to Ka’b al-Ahbar by Isma’il ibn Ja’far al-Madani, in which he says,
“In the Torah I see the description of men who I have not seen yet. Vile men in whose hands are whips like cow tails; they will be from the people of the Fire. In the Torah I see the description of women who I have not seen yet. They behave delicately (in front of others), dressed yet naked; they will be from the people of the Fire.”
The hadiths of Ismail ibn Ja’far (number 411). [Source]
These narrations make it clear that Abdullah ibn Amr was referring to Jewish religious texts that he read himself, or that he was quoting Ka’b al-Ahbar (when they say Torah it should not be understood literally to mean the actual Torah but could refer to other Jewish texts).
Therefore the hadith I was asked about comes via Ka’b al-Ahbar from Jewish texts, and Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As most likely took this prophecy from Ka’b or found it himself in some Jewish religious text. As for the narration in Musnad Ahmad attributing this to God’s Messenger ﷺ and adding that God’s Messenger ﷺ instructed us to curse such women, this only comes from the rejected addition of a narrator who made many mistakes: Abdullah ibn Ayyash.
Addendum:
The discussion above referred to the hadith of Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As. There is a similar hadith also going back to Abu Hurayra found in Sahih Muslim and the Muwatta of Imam Malik. The version in Sahih Muslim says,
Abu Hurayra said: God’s Messenger ﷺ said,
“Two types of the people of the Fire I have not seen (in my time): Men with whips like cow tails with which they hit people, and women who are dressed yet naked, who sway and make others sway toward them, whose heads are like the humps of Bactrian camels which lean sideways. These women will not enter Paradise nor will they smell its perfume even though its perfume could be smelled from such-and-such a far distance.”
Note: This hadith also does not have the wrong addition “Curse them for they are cursed.”
This hadith also suffers from a problem, which is why Imam Bukhari and others did not include it in their collections. This hadith goes back to Abu Hurayra via his student Abu Salih, but Abu Salih’s students differed. Abu Salih’s son Suhayl narrated it as a hadith of God’s Messenger (Suhayl – Abu Salih – Abu Hurayra – God’s Messenger ﷺ). However, Muslim ibn Abi Maryam narrated it as the saying of Abu Hurayra himself (Muslim ibn Abi Maryam – Abu Salih – Abu Hurayra).
Imam Muslim accepted the version by Suhayl and considered this an authentic hadith. However, Imam Malik narrated and accepted the other version in which this hadith stops at Abu Hurayra as his own saying. This is also the position of Imam Bukhari, and the master hadith critic al-Daraqutni, who wrote that Malik’s version which stops at Abu Hurayra is the well-known version (al-Daraqutni, al-Ilal, vo. 10, p. 150).
In conclusion, it appears most likely that this teaching comes from Jewish texts via the Jewish convert Ka’b al-Ahbar, and that both Abu Hurayra and Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As took this saying from Ka’b al-Ahbar, and that some narrators made the mistake of thinking that these Companions heard this from God’s Messenger ﷺ instead. And God ﷻ knows best.
Basira Academy 