Is the hadith (Do not write down from me anything other than the Qur'an, and whoever writes down from me anything other than that, let him erase it) authentic?

The questioner: Praise be to Allah, and may peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah and his family. And after that, our Shaykh, may Allah reward you with good. We have heard many people, and perhaps you know that their statement has roots going back to the Orientalists and their fabrications, which is that the noble hadith was not written down until the second or third Hijri century. And they cited, of course, hadiths, and perhaps the most authentic of them, or the only one that is authentic in this regard, is the authentic hadith narrated by Muslim from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri (may Allah be pleased with him) . And they also cited reports from Abu Bakr and 'Umar (may Allah be pleased with them both) regarding the prohibition or dislike of writing down the Prophetic hadiths. Then we saw scholars also say, yes, this hadith indicates that writing down hadith is not permissible initially, and then the command was abrogated. So the question, may Allah reward you with good, is: does this hadith truly indicate the prohibition of writing down hadith? Or is there a difference of opinion regarding its being marfu' or mawquf? We want an explanation of its authenticity as marfu', and then does it truly indicate the prohibition of writing down hadith? And what is its abrogator if it has one? Or what is your interpretation or explanation of this hadith? And may Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh: Praise be to Allah, we praise Him and seek His help and seek His forgiveness, and we seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our souls and from the badness of our deeds. Whom Allah guides, there is no one who can mislead him, and whom He leaves to mislead, there is no one who can guide him. And I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, with no partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger. As for what follows, the best of speech is the speech of Allah, and the best of guidance is the guidance of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), and the worst of matters are their innovations, and every innovation is a misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Fire. And after that, the question was from one of our brothers sitting with us, who is a strong student of knowledge, if Allah wills, regarding an issue that the enemies of Islam have always raised, from the Orientalists and from Muslims who have become Westernized and influenced by the directives of the disbelieving Orientalists. That issue is the lack of trust in the hadiths currently narrated in the books of the Sunnah. There is no difference for them between what is authentic in its chain and what is not authentic in its chain, and consequently, there is no difference between what is in the two Sahihs, or in the Sunan, or in the Musnads, or in other books of hadith. That is because they want to make Muslims doubt the second source of the Islamic sacred law after the Noble Qur'an. That is because they know for certain, and I say regretfully, they know a scientific fact that some Muslim scholars, especially some of the contemporary ones, have neglected. They do not pay attention to the importance of the Sunnah and its connection to the Noble Qur'an, in the sense that it is not possible for the Muslim scholar to understand the Qur'an as Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) intended except through the way of the hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him and his family). And they, meaning the Orientalists, know that one of the most important reasons for the division of the Islamic sects in understanding the Book of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is their disagreement in the Sunnah. And their disagreement in the Sunnah returns, as mentioned by the Shaykh al-Islam in his famous treatise in which he explains the reasons for the disagreement of Muslim scholars, to more than ten reasons. Among them is that one of those scholars would be reached by a hadith and he would act upon it, while another would not be reached by the hadith and would exert his independent legal reasoning with his opinion. And this independent legal reasoning with opinion is absolutely not a problem, because it is one of the four sources after the Book and the Sunnah, then comes the scholarly consensus of the Ummah, and then comes the independent legal reasoning whose door our Prophet (may the prayers and peace of Allah be upon him) opened with the authentic hadith narrated by the Imam al-Bukhari in his Sahih from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) that he said: . Independent legal reasoning is one of the causes of disagreement among Muslim scholars, because when does the jurist exert his independent legal reasoning? When the explicit text is missing from the Book or the Sunnah. As for the Book, as you all know, it is preserved by the preservation of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) for it, letter by letter. As for the Sunnah, from the wisdom of Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), He decreed that it be preserved by the efforts of the scholars, and not by the direct preservation of Allah as He did with the Noble Qur'an. And therefore, the hadith of the Prophet was one of the causes of disagreement among Muslim scholars. Some of them would refer the hadith to him, and some would not refer to it. Whoever was reached by the hadith would issue a ruling based on it, and whoever was not reached by it would exert his opinion. He may hit the mark, and he may err. And you know that if he hits the mark, he has two rewards, and if he errs, he has one reward. And there is another aspect: the hadith may be referred to the jurist, and then he does not act upon it. Why? Because it came from a weak chain. And this weakness may be relative, meaning it is weak with respect to him, but with respect to another Imam, it may be strong. That other Imam may take it, and the first Imam does not take it. The one who did not take it exerts his independent legal reasoning and issues a ruling with his opinion. It often happens that his independent legal reasoning contradicts the hadith of that scholar which was established with him. And there are, and there are, and there are many, many details related to the science of hadith, the terminology of hadith, the men of the narrators of hadith, and the like, so we do not want to take you far from answering the question.