What is the authenticity of the hadith: “There is no great or small matter among what will happen that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not inform his Companions of.”

The questioner: His EminenceThe Shaykh : Regarding this... one of the brothers, I mean, says that this hadith has confused him. He searched for it extensively but did not find a sermon by the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) of this length. He asked many scholars but did not find an answer. Then he saw you in a dream and asked you, and you directed him to a specific part and page in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad. Then he returned to the Musnad but did not find the hadith.

The Shaykh: Yes

The questioner : So, this placed the trust of conveying the question and then taking the answer and delivering it to him upon me. What is the answer? May Allah reward you.

The Shaykh : By Allah, I do not think I have anything that can be said, as I mentioned earlier. Perhaps that was before your arrival, which opened things up for me. I do not have anything of this sort, but what I understood from what I read of the scholars’ explanations regarding this hadith is that the intended meaning is not what comes to the mind of the reader or listener at first glance, namely: “There is no great or small matter among what will happen that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not inform his Companions of.” I think a discussion once took place between me and one of the Sufis, and therefore, who has looked into this?
Al-Halabi : Al-Nuwas, at Abu Yahya’s house, two years ago.

The Shaykh : Who is Abu Yahya?
Al-Halabi : Our brother Zuhayr.

The Shaykh : Yes, well done.
Al-Halabi : The doorman was al-Asmari; he was present that day.

The Shaykh : Yes, so this man appears to be a Sufi. I think he is from your area, from Zarqa.
Al-Halabi : Yes, from Zarqa, O Shaykh.

The Shaykh : The outlines of that old session remain in my memory. The point is that he uses this hadith to argue for what the extremists among the Sufis claim, namely that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)... and I think the occasion also involved a discussion about the extremists among the Sufis and about al-Busiri and his saying, I mean:
“For from Your generosity are the world and its counterpart, and from Your knowledge is the knowledge of the Tablet and the Pen.”
So he objected to my belief regarding this poem. I said, how can it be said regarding the Messenger (peace be upon him): “and from Your knowledge is the knowledge of the Tablet and the Pen”? So he objected to me with this hadith. I answered with what I intended to say just now. The hadith, as they say, has many threads. I remembered this discussion that took place between me and the man, and I said that the hadith does not mean that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) informed his Companions of every great and small matter, but rather that he informed them of the important matters among what will happen, related to the signs of the Hour, the minor ones, let alone the major ones. I remember that I mentioned at that time that I can say this is from my own understanding, I mean, what I have read, but based on what I have read, I said that if the Messenger (peace be upon him) had spoken about everything that will happen, as you and others understand, this first requires, for the Messenger (peace be upon him), the folding of time, because if the speaker spoke about what will be on the Day of Resurrection, it would require hundreds of years, because he is speaking about what Allah (Mighty and Majestic) has decreed to be. This is almost an impossible matter. Then, even if we assume this impossible matter for the Messenger as a miracle, what about the Companions? What about their intellect, their memory, and their time? Is it within the capacity of humans, and they are human, to comprehend all these long reports, which, if we said they were in the thousands, or even millions, we would not be exaggerating? Therefore, I say that the truth, as mentioned by the scholars who explained it, is that this is not the intended meaning, but rather the great matters about which the Messenger (peace be upon him) spoke. Then, it is not necessary that what he spoke of, within the limits of his humanity (peace be upon him) on one hand, and within the limits of the humanity of those who listened to him, and who captured and preserved his hadith on the other hand, that these people must have reported everything the Messenger (peace be upon him) spoke of in the first and second stages, and presented it in a single sequence, a single context, like some of the long stories, for example, found in the two Sahihs and elsewhere, such as the story of the slander regarding Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her), which spans pages, or the Battle of al-Hudaybiyyah, likewise, and so on. It is not necessary, I believe, that the Companions... and this also leads me to a very important issue, and as they say, one thing reminds me of another. Just as we do not imagine that a single Companion encompassed the entire Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in knowledge, so it is not right to imagine that a single Companion encompassed the hadith of the Messenger (peace be upon him) in these stages mentioned in the hadith from A to Z. But as we say regarding the first matter, the first matter, we say that we do not imagine that a single Companion memorized the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) from beginning to end, but we are certain and assert that this Sunnah, from beginning to end, was encompassed in knowledge by the collective of the Companions of the Messenger (peace be upon him), and not by one or any one of them. In this manner, it is not necessary that a single Companion narrate to us what the Messenger (peace be upon him) spoke of in those occasions on that day. And therefore, I remember that in some narrations, mentions this, I think? Ah, so there is no doubt that the Companions comprehended the hadith of the Messenger, and each of them reported a portion of that hadith. So it came to us expanded and scattered in the pages of the books of the Sunnah. And this leads us to the necessity of collecting the Sunnah and purifying it, contrary to the new, innovated methodology that you mentioned, quoting from some of them. This means freezing the Sunnah with its authentic, weak, and fabricated parts, without any distinction between the authentic and the weak. And no Muslim would say this at all. This is what I can answer regarding such a question, and perhaps it will reach that dreamer, and perhaps it was just a jumble of dreams.