Supplement on Encouraging the Accompaniment of the Dead and Attending Their Burial.

The Shaykh : We are still in the first section on encouraging the accompaniment of the dead and attending their burial. We had read the first hadiths of this section in the previous lesson, so let us continue with the remaining hadiths of this section.
The fourth hadith is the first of this lesson, as we have already passed over the one before it due to its weakness.
The fourth hadith is: His statement regarding Abu Sa'id al-Khudri (may Allah be pleased with him) that he heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) say: It was narrated by Ibn Hibban in his "Sahih."
This hadith, like the previous hadiths from this section, was covered in some of the older lessons, and we discussed them there; so there is no need for us to repeat the discussion on it. The following hadith is similar; so we will remind you of it, then move on to the hadith after it. He said: And from him—meaning Abu Sa'id al-Khudri—he said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: It was narrated by Ahmad, al-Bazzar, and Ibn Hibban in his "Sahih," and it, along with others, was mentioned earlier in the section on visiting the sick.
However, I will remind you here of a brief point; which is his statement (peace be upon him) in this hadith: The author followed this with the second hadith from Abu Hurayrah, which clarifies this portion of Abu Sa'id's hadith; which is his statement (peace be upon him): To clarify that it explains the following hadith: that accompanying the funeral takes place in two stages:
The first: from their home to the mosque or to the prayer place to pray over them.
And the other stage—which is more complete—is also to continue accompanying the funeral after the prayer over it until one attends its burial. So the following hadith clarifies the difference in reward and virtue between the first stage and the other stage, as you will hear clearly.
He said: And from Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) he said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: It was asked: What are the two qirats? He said: And in a hadith that will come: The qirat is like Uhud—Mount Uhud. He said in this hadith: It was narrated by al-Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasa'i, and Ibn Majah. And in a narration by Muslim and others: —the smaller of the two great mountains. He said: And in a narration by al-Bukhari: .
In this hadith is the detail we mentioned earlier that the accompaniment is in two halves; the first half has the reward of one qirat, and the second half has the reward of another qirat. . The qirat in language varies in some countries; in most countries, the qirat is one-twentieth, and here in the Levant—and I do not know if the matter is still so, and this is what I think—it is one twenty-fourth. So the qirat is one-twentieth or one twenty-fourth. This is for the one who accompanies the funeral from its home to its grave; he has the reward of two qirats; every qirat is like Mount Uhud. But does this accompaniment or this reward apply to every companion, especially if he accompanies it from his home to the mosque and then does not enter the mosque, or from his home to the prayer place where the funeral is prayed over?
There is no doubt that the one who obtains the reward of the two qirats—or at least the single qirat—must fulfill what you heard in some narrations of the hadith: with faith and seeking reward. So this excludes everyone who accompanies the funeral for another reason other than seeking reward and drawing near to Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He). And this is what is observed today; that accompanying the funeral has become a matter of lifting responsibility, or has become—as I believe and always call it—social hypocrisy. Very few, very few people accompany the funeral to obtain this great reward and merit mentioned in this hadith. And it will come in some of the nearby hadiths that one of the noble Companions did not have knowledge of this hadith, which the primary merit of preserving for this Ummah belongs to the one who heard it from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him); namely, this noble man Abu Hurayrah, to whom the primary merit of preserving this hadith belongs; because it was hidden from some of the worshipping, ascetic Companions. You will hear that a discussion took place among some of them regarding this hadith narrated by Abu Hurayrah, and the matter required that they ask Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her), and she confirmed his hadith. So that Companion—and who do you think Ibn Umar is?!—said: "We have lost many qirats."
And if we return to remind you of some of our comments on accompanying the funeral in some of the hadiths we passed over quickly earlier; that accompanying funerals in the way they are accompanied today is not of the Sunnah in any way. And now the matter becomes clear to you; for the custom of accompanying funerals by cars forbids many people from obtaining such great reward; because not all of them can ride in a car; so he needs to accompany it from its home to the mosque where it is prayed over, and then to its final resting place. And so you find today that the accompaniment of funerals is in two forms:
The first—and it is the common one now—is by cars. So the companions are first few in number, and this is what brings harm, or if we say negative harm, to the deceased; because these are the great people of the people—they claim!—so despite their fewness, they do not pray over the dead, so the dead does not benefit from their accompaniment at all. So this accompaniment is the prevalent one now.
And the second type: accompanying on the shoulders as is the Sunnah. You find that those who accompany and those who carry the funeral on their shoulders are also fewer than few; that is because we live and are raised with a non-Islamic upbringing, and Islamic upbringing springs from the softness of children's nails, so he grows up and matures while being directed from the smallest society, the smallest community, the home community, then the local, then then; so that he is able to carry the funeral on his shoulder when he becomes forty or fifty years old. But now we live a life of comfort and luxury, and are far from bearing weights and hardships. And so the soul suggests to us that we use these modern means without need, but rather without necessity. And we said when a question came to us: What if the grave is far? So we say then that accompanying by car has a special ruling. But the research is that making the custom of accompanying funerals this way is contrary to the Sunnah, and it deprives the one being accompanied and the one accompanying of the good. As for the one being accompanied, the number of people praying over him decreases. And it has come in authentic hadiths, some of which say that if one hundred people pray over him, some say if forty people pray over it, some say if three rows pray over him. We said this will be intercession for this deceased and the one prayed over.
So these modern means that have been adopted as a committed custom waste the benefit for the dead first, and then for the companions second. So look now at how many and how many qirats are being lost on us because of this custom that has crept in to us from those who do not have even one qirat; because these qirats, as you heard, are for whom? For the one who accompanied with faith and seeking reward. The disbelievers do not know anything of this. So we take from this hadith this important warning: that departing from the guidance of the Messenger (peace be upon him) in every obedience and every worship, even if it is from the category of collective obligation in that, is a very, very great loss that people do not feel, because: first, of their ignorance, and second, of their heedlessness, and they may both be present.
So, the one who accompanies the funeral until he prays over it has the reward of one qirat, and the qirat's reward with Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is like Mount Uhud. And the one who continues to accompany after the prayer over it until it is buried has the reward of two qirats.
The following hadith is equivalent to the previous one, with some of the clarification we mentioned earlier. It states: It was narrated from 'Amir ibn Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas that he was sitting with Ibn 'Umar when Khubayb, the guardian of the pulpit, came in and said: "O 'Abd Allah ibn 'Umar, do you not hear what Abu Hurayrah is saying? He says that he heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) say: ." So Ibn 'Umar sent Khubayb to 'A'ishah to ask her about Abu Hurayrah's statement, and then to return to him and tell him what she said. Ibn 'Umar took a handful of pebbles from the mosque and turned them over in his hand. Imagine this situation, for it is a very eloquent one, especially in its outcome. He said: "Ibn 'Umar took a handful of pebbles from the mosque and turned them over in his hand until he returned." 'A'ishah said: "Abu Hurayrah told the truth." Ibn 'Umar struck the ground with the pebbles in his hand and then said: "We have indeed neglected many small grains of reward."
Ibn 'Umar neglected it because he had not heard this hadith; that is, he did not have this incentive, which is one of the means of the Shari'ah for educating the Muslim and encouraging and motivating him to perform certain acts of worship: the explanation of the reward and recompense for these acts. Ibn 'Umar had not heard this hadith from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), nor from any of the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), such as Abu Hurayrah, except in this incident when Khubayb conveyed to him what Abu Hurayrah was saying: that he had heard this hadith from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). So Ibn 'Umar's failure to accompany the funeral procession was not due to his neglect of the Sunnah or the reward and virtue, but rather because he did not have knowledge of such a great reward, which might lead a person occupied with other prescribed virtues—such as knowledge, for example, or prayer and the like—to devote himself to this accompanying, from the time the funeral procession leaves the house until it is placed in its final resting place. Ibn 'Umar did not have knowledge of this virtue, so he struck the ground with the pebbles in his hand, regretful, and said: "We have indeed neglected many small grains of reward." As for us today, both matters may coincide: ignorance, for most people do not know. These hadiths have, unfortunately, become forgotten by the scholars, let alone others. Because the scholars, unfortunately, once again, when they read a hadith, say—or claim—it is for the blessing only! Not for understanding it and acting upon what is in it, but rather like this, for the blessing. And I do not know what this blessing is. If the Qur'an or the Sunnah is read not for acting upon it, that is not a blessing; rather, it is the opposite of a blessing. Because the Qur'an and the Sunnah, in that case, each becomes an argument against its holder. Because it is the knowledge of the truth, and then he deviated from it and did not act upon it. If he were to make an excuse, saying we are not scholars, we are not jurists, but Allah (Mighty and Majestic) only revealed the Qur'an for people to read it and reflect upon it, and He warned them with His saying (Glorified and Exalted is He), if they do not do so, when He said: .
I say: These hadiths, if they are recited today, are recited—as we said—... earlier for the blessing, and not for acting upon them. And yet, few study the Sunnah today. And if they study it to understand it and act upon it, another defect occurs: they study the Sunnah from the aggregate of what is in it, both what is authentic and what is not. So either they proceed to act upon this aggregate, both what is authentic and what is not, or they are deterred from acting upon the entire aggregate when it becomes clear to them after a time that there are things they acted upon for a long time, and they turn out to be not authentic.
If some people become aware of this, they turn away from the whole. Otherwise, if they hold fast to the whole, they are falling into lying about the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) in narration and in practice. And in this is much evil, compared to what is known in the hadiths of the Messenger (peace be upon him) of warning against narrating hadith from him except after verifying its authenticity.
Our problem today is twofold. The first is ignorance of the Sunnah, even though it is made accessible through the books of hadith. The other problem is that we have turned our religious life into an innovative, pre-Islamic age of ignorance life of the twentieth century. Therefore, one benefit of the Sunnah, especially in our method of restricting the teaching to what is authentic from it, is reviving these religious landmarks and planting them in the hearts of the young Muslim, so that they proceed to act upon them, and remove as much as they can of the obstacles that stand in their way and prevent them from obtaining such a great reward.
I remembered something in the previous hadith: when Khubayb mentioned the story, he mentioned from Abu Hurayrah that he says: I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) say this hadith. So I want to remind, especially those of our brothers present who are concerned with reading the Sunnah and reading what they may read in some magazines that gather whatever comes and goes of knowledge, both what is authentic and what is not. They hear—for example—much criticism of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), the memorizer of the Sunnah. They say, for example, from these doubts: Abu Hurayrah only reached the end of Islam; he embraced Islam in the Battle of Khaybar, so he only experienced about two and a half years of the life of the Messenger (peace be upon him). How, then, is he the most memorizing of the Companions and the one with the most hadith?
Regarding this, the answer among the scholars of hadith can be summarized in two answers or two reasons:
The first reason: his eagerness to stay close to the Messenger (peace be upon him) and accompany him in all circumstances. He was not married, and he was not a man of agriculture and livestock. He was content with the least of sustenance, and indeed he would starve himself for hours, or even days, to keep close to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and benefit from him. It was as if he felt that his Islam was late, so he wanted to compensate for the much good he missed when he did not embrace Islam from the beginning of the Messenger's (peace and blessings be upon him) mission. And so he devoted himself to this Prophetic knowledge to acquire it from him (peace be upon him). This is the first reason, and it is stated in some hadiths. 'Umar ibn al-Khattab acknowledged Abu Hurayrah's memorization and said: "The bustle in the markets occupied us from knowledge." 'Umar himself, the second Rightly Guided Caliph, said this. As for Abu Hurayrah, nothing occupied him. So this attention of his to the companionship of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and receiving hadith from him made him have more material in hadith than the other Companions, even those who were among the earliest to embrace Islam.
The second reason—and it is a fundamental one—is that this hadith falls under the first category; because he stated that Abu Hurayrah said: “I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him).” Therefore, this hadith was heard by him directly, and 'Umar ibn 'Umar derived it from him, as you heard in the story. As for the second answer, it is that Abu Hurayrah also maintained contact with the Companions who had preceded him in Islam, and he would take from them what they had heard from him (peace and blessings be upon him), either because of their seniority or because of their seclusion and private gatherings with the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). He added this to what he received directly from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him); so the result was that he was the most memorizing of all the Companions of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) without exception. Abu Hurayrah used to think that someone else was more memorizing, but scientific research clarified that this assumption was a mistake on his part, and it was to his benefit; that is, it was a mistake that was to his benefit. This is because he used to say about one of the Companions—and he is 'Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As, not this 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar ibn al-Khattab—he used to say about 'Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As: “He is more memorizing than I am,” and he justified this by saying: “He used to write, and I did not write.” So he assumed a hypothesis that might be correct, but research and induction showed that Abu Hurayrah remained the most memorizing of the Companions, more so than every individual among them, including this servant 'Abdullah whom Abu Hurayrah thought was more memorizing than him. The reason is what we mentioned earlier: his exclusive dedication to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) by his care to receive hadith from him, then his contact with the Companions and his gathering of what they had of the Sunnah; so he had more hadith than 'Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As.
It is very easy to discover this. We take “Musnad al-Imam Ahmad,” which is still the broadest of the books of the Sunnah in collecting material of hadith traced to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), in six large volumes. The second volume contains the Musnad of this 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar, and the Musnad of that 'Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As, and the Musnad of another Companion who is not well known, known by his kunyah Abu Rumthah, and the Musnad of Abu Hurayrah. If we take the Musnad of Abu Hurayrah, it takes up the entire text of this volume alone; only the Musnad of Abu Hurayrah. The first half is taken up by these Companions: Ibn 'Umar, Ibn 'Amr, and Abu Rumthah. So where is the hadith of Ibn 'Amr in comparison to the abundance of the hadith of Abu Hurayrah? May Allah be pleased with him for his zeal for knowledge, he preserved for us from the Sunnah what no other Companion preserved. Many hadiths come from other routes, like this hadith which we are currently discussing. A hadith of Thawban will come to you now, and in the hadith of Abu Hurayrah you learned that the Lady A'ishah confirmed Abu Hurayrah in his hadith. But sometimes hadiths come to him that he narrates exclusively, and no one from the Companions supports him in that. For example, the famous hadith in “Sahih Muslim”: Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) said: This is a long hadith and a qudsi hadith, narrated in the “Musnad” as well, and in “Sahih Muslim.” Abu Hurayrah narrated it exclusively, without any of the other Companions. And how many such virtues does he have, where the credit for preserving them from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) returns to him!
The hadith that follows is also from the authentic hadiths, in the previous sense, but it is from another Companion. The hadith of Thawban: the author says: And from Thawban (may Allah be pleased with him), that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: It was narrated by Muslim and Ibn Majah, and Ibn Majah also narrated it from the hadith of Abu ibn Ka'b, and added at the end: .
Now the hadith of Ibn 'Umar comes with the same previous hadith, but you must now be aware that it is of the type that scholars of hadith call the marasil of the Companions; because you learned that when Ibn 'Umar heard the hadith of A'ishah, he said: “We have neglected many qirats.” Now he himself is narrating this hadith, but he says “from the Prophet” and does not say “I heard.” So its meaning is that he received it from whom? Either from Abu Hurayrah or from A'ishah who confirmed him.
He said: And from Ibn 'Umar (may Allah be pleased with them both), from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), who said: So the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) was asked about the qirat? And he said: And in a narration: They said: O Messenger of Allah, like our qirats here? He said: It was narrated by Ahmad and its narrators are trustworthy.
The last hadith in this chapter, and with it the lesson ends. This hadith has also been mentioned previously, so we are only reminding you of it. He said: And from Abu Hurayrah, who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: Abu Bakr said: I am. He said: . Abu Bakr said: I am. He said: Abu Bakr said: I am. He said: Abu Bakr said: I am. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: Here there is an omission that I placed in the margin, so whoever has a copy should correct his copy. The omission is after he said: , without this addition the meaning of the hadith changes completely; meaning, if in his lifetime he did these five things, it would be true that he entered Paradise, whereas the hadith in the same source to which the author attributed it, with this addition, said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . He says: It was narrated by Ibn Khuzaymah in his “Sahih.” And this is a shortcoming of the author in takhrij (tracing the hadith to its sources), because this hadith is in “Sahih Muslim,” and he attributed it to “Sahih Ibn Khuzaymah.” And this, in the terminology of the scholars of knowledge, is a shortcoming in the science of takhrij; because if the hadith is in one of the “Two Sahihs,” it is not permissible to attribute it to others except by appending them to it or to one of them. As for it being said that Ibn Khuzaymah narrated it, and Muslim narrated it, and it is not mentioned; this is a shortcoming in takhrij. The reason is clear, and it is the trust that the “Two Sahihs” have gained among the scholars of the Ummah in terms of the precision of the conditions they committed to in extracting the hadiths in their books, unlike others. Among them is this Ibn Khuzaymah to whom the author attributed the hadith; he is lenient compared to the two in the “Two Sahihs,” because he often narrates from some of the unknown, and this is leniency, whereasThe Shaykh : this leniency... and their hadiths are distinguished by the highest level of authenticity; therefore, it is not correct that a hadith is not attributed to one of the “Two Sahihs” when it is in one of them, and is attributed to others; for this reason.
In any case, the author actually has a great merit; because it appears from the folds of his book that he dictated this book from his memory, not from a book!! And if this memory undoubtedly requires preparation and review, but whatever the case, one of us today is unable to dictate a page from his memory without making a mistake; so what about him who dictated two volumes like this volume, one of which is this, by dictation? So it is no surprise that he would be inattentive, forget, and make a mistake, and all sons of Adam are prone to error, and the best of those who err are the repentant. However, his mistake is not of the type of error that requires repentance; because it is not a sin, but rather inattention. And Allah (Glorified and Exalted is He) will reward him in any case, and we ask Him to reward us with him as well.
The professor has questions and did not attend today; so perhaps the obstacle for him is good.

The questioner: The one after it is weak?

The Shaykh: Yes.