LECTURE TITLE:
The Basmalah Is Part of al-Faatihah
LECTURER:
Shaykh Nuh Keller
LANGUAGES :
In English.
LECTURE :
It may surprise some people to learn that one example often cited in
hadith textbooks of such a hidden flaw (‘illa) is from Sahih Muslim,
all of whose hadiths are rigorously authenticated (sahih), as Ibn
al-Salah has said, "except for a very small number of words, which
hadith masters of textual evaluation (naqd) such as Daraqutni and
others have critiqued, and which are known to scholars of this level"
(‘Ulum al-hadith). The hadith of the present example was related by
Muslim from the Companion Anas ibn Malik in several versions, which
might convince those unaware of its flaw to believe that someone at
prayer should omit the Basmala or "Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim" at
the beginning of the Fatiha. According to the hadith, Anas ibn Malik
(Allah be well pleased with him) said,
I prayed with the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him
peace), Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman, and they opened with "al-Hamdu li
Llahi Rabbi l-‘Alamin,"not mentioning "Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim"
at the first of the recital or the last of it [and in another version,
"I didn’t hear any of them recite ‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim’"]
(Muslim, 1.299).
Scholars say the hadith’s flaw lies in the negation of the Basmala at
the end, which is not the words of Anas, but rather one of the
subnarrators explaining what he thought Anas meant. Ibn al-Salah says:
"Its subnarrator related it with the above-mentioned wording in
accordance with his own understanding of it" (Muqaddima Ibn al-Salah
(b01), 99). This hadith is given as an example of a "hidden flaw" in a
number of manuals of hadith terminology such as hadith master (hafiz)
Suyuti’s Tadrib al-rawi (1.254–57); hadith master Ibn al-Salah’s Ulum
al-hadith; hadith master Zayn al-Din al-‘Iraqi’s al-Taqyid wa al-idah
(98–103); and others. Al-‘Iraqi says, "A number of hadith masters
(huffaz) have judged it to be flawed, including Shafi‘i, Daraqutni,
Bayhaqi, and Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr" (ibid., 98).
Now, Bukhari has related the hadith up to the words "and they opened
with ‘al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-‘Alamin’"; without mentioning omitting
the Basmala (Bukhari, 1.189), and Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud relate no
other version. Scholars point out, in this connection, that the words
"al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-‘Alamin" were in fact the name of the
Fatiha, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and his
Companions often used the opening words of suras as names for them; for
example, in the hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari of Abu Sa‘id ibn al-Mu‘alla,
who relates that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:
"I will teach you a sura that is the greatest sura of the Qur’an before
you leave the mosque." Then he took my hand, and when he was going out,
I said to him, "Didn’t you say, ‘I will teach you a sura that is the
greatest sura of the Qur’an before you leave the mosque’?" And he said:
"‘Al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-‘Alamin’: it is the Seven Oft-Recited
[Verses] (al-Sab‘ al-Mathani) and the Tremendous Recital (al-Qur’an
al-‘Adhim) that I have been given" (ibid., 6.20–21).
In this hadith, "Al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-‘Alamin" is plainly the name
of the Fatiha, and means nothing besides, for otherwise, it is one
verse, not seven. ‘A’isha, who was one of the ulama of the Sahaba, also
referred to names of suras in this way, as in the hadith of Bukhari that
the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), when he went to bed
each night, joined his hands together, blew a light spray of saliva
upon them, and read over them "Qul huwa Llahu Ahad," "Qul a‘udhu bi
Rabbi l-Falaq," and "Qul a‘udhu bi Rabbi n-Nas"; then wiped every part
of his body he could with them (ibid., 233–34),
which clearly shows that she named the suras by their opening words
(after the Basmala), as did other early Muslims (such as Bukhari in his
chapter headings in the section of his Sahih on the Virtues of the
Qur’an, for example). So there is no indication, in the portion of the
Anas hadith’s wording that is agreed upon by both Bukhari and Muslim;
namely, "I prayed with the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give
him peace), Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman, and they opened with
‘al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-‘Alamin,’" that the Basmala was not recited
aloud. Says Tirmidhi: "Imam Shafi‘i has said, ‘Its meaning is that they
used to begin with the Fatiha before the sura, not that they did not
recite "Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim."’ And Shafi‘i held that the
prayer was begun with ‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,’ and that it was
recited aloud in prayers recited aloud" (Tirmidhi, 2.16).
Hadith scholars who are masters of textual critique, like Daraqutni and
others, consider the words of the Anas hadith"not mentioning ‘Bismi
Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,’" which outwardly seem to suggest omitting the
Basmala, to be vitiated by an ‘illa or "hidden flaw" for many reasons,
a few of which are:
—It is established by numerous intersubstantiative channels of
transmission (tawatur), that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace) said, "There is no prayer for whoever does not recite the
Fatiha" (Bukhari, 1.192). That the Basmala is the Fatiha’s first verse
is shown by several facts:
First, the Sahaba affirmed nothing in the collation of the Qur’an
(mushaf) of ‘Uthman’s time except what was Qur’an, and they unanimously
placed the Basmala at the beginning of every sura except surat
al-Tawba.
Second, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, "When
you recite ‘al-Hamdu li Llah,’ recite ‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,’
for it is the Sum of the Qur’an (Umm al-Qur’an), and the Compriser of
the Scripture (Umm al-Kitab), and the Seven Oft-Repeated [Verses]
(al-Sab‘ al-Mathani)—and ‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim’ is one of its
verses" (Bayhaqi, 2.45; and Daraqutni, 1.312), a hadith related with a
rigorously authenticated (sahih) channel of transmission to the Prophet
(Allah bless him and give him peace), and through another chain to Abu
Hurayra alone (Allah be well pleased with him).
Third, Umm Salama relates: "The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace) used to recite: ‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim. al-Hamdu li
Llahi Rabbi l-‘Alamin,’ separating each phrase"; a hadith which Hakim
said was rigorously authenticated (sahih) according to the conditions
of Bukhari and Muslim, which Imam Dhahabi corroborated (al-Mustadrak,
1.232). Daraqutni also relates from Umm Salama that "the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace) when he used to recite the Qur’an would
pause in his recital verse by verse: ‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim:
al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-‘Alamin: ar-Rahmani r-Rahim: Maliki yawmi
d-din.’" Daraqutni said, "Its ascription is rigorously authenticated
(sahih); all of its narrators are reliable" (Daraqutni, 1.312–13).
These hadiths show that the Basmala was recited aloud by the Prophet
(Allah bless him and give him peace) as part of the Fatiha.
Fourth, Bukhari relates in his Sahih that when Anas was asked how the
Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to recite, "he
answered: ‘By prolonging [the vowels]’—and then he [Anas] recited
‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,’ prolonging the Bismi Llah, prolonging
the r-Rahman, and prolonging the r-Rahim" (Bukhari, 6.241), indicating
that Anas regarded this as part of the Prophet’s Qur’an recital and
that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) recited it aloud.
Fifth, Daraqutni has recorded two hadiths, both from Ibn ‘Abbas, and
has said about each of them, "This is a rigorously authenticated
(sahih) chain of transmission, there is not a weak narrator in it," of
which the first is: "The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)
used to recite ‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,’ aloud"; and the second
is: "The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to begin the
prayer with ‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim’" (al-Nawawi: al-Majmu‘,
3.347).
—Imam al-Mawardi summarizes: "Because it is established that it is
obligatory to recite the Fatiha in the prayer, and that the Basmala is
part of it, the ruling for reciting the Basmala aloud or to oneself
must be the same as that of reciting the Fatiha aloud or to oneself"
(al-Hawi al-kabir, 2.139).
—Imam Nawawi says: "Concerning reciting ‘Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim’
aloud, we have mentioned that our position is that it is praiseworthy
to do so. Wherever one recites the Fatiha and sura aloud, the ruling
for reciting the Basmala aloud is the same as reciting the rest of the
Fatiha and sura aloud. This is the position of the majority of the
ulama of the Sahaba and those who were taught by them (Tabi‘in) and
those after them. As for the Sahaba who held the Basmala is recited
aloud at prayer, the hadith master (hafiz) Abu Bakr al-Khatib reports
that they included Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman, ‘Ali, ‘Ammar ibn Yasir,
Ubayy ibn Ka‘b, Ibn ‘Umar, Ibn ‘Abbas, Abu Qatada, Abu Sa‘id, Qays ibn
Malik, Abu Hurayra, ‘Abdullah ibn Abi Awfa, Shaddad ibn Aws, ‘Abdullah
ibn Ja‘far, Husayn ibn ‘Ali, Mu‘awiya, and the congregation of
Emigrants (Muhajirin) and Helpers (Ansar) who were present with
Mu‘awiya when he prayed in Medina but did not say the Basmala aloud,
and they censured him, so he returned to saying it aloud" (al-Majmu‘,
3.341).
These are some reasons why scholars regard the Anas hadith in Sahih
Muslim to be mu‘all or "flawed." We cannot here discuss other aspects
of the hadith such as the flaws in its chain of narrators, which are
explained in detail in Zayn al-Din ‘Iraqi’s al-Taqyid wa al-idah
(100–101), though the foregoing may give a general idea why it has been
considered flawed by hadith masters (huffaz) such as Suyuti, ‘Iraqi,
Ibn Salah, Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr, Daraqutni, and Bayhaqi—and why the shari‘a
ruling apparently deducible from the end of the hadith; namely,
omitting the Basmala when reciting the Fatiha at prayer, has been
rejected by al-Shafi‘i, Nawawi, and others, who hold that the Basmala
is recited aloud whenever the Fatiha is. (The position of Abu Hanifa
and Ahmad ibn Hanbal, it may be noted, is that one recites the Basmala
to oneself before the Fatiha, thus joining between hadiths on both
sides by interpreting the "omitting" in the Anas hadith in other than
its apparent sense, to mean merely "reciting to oneself.") In any case,
it is clearly not a story of "the hadith in Sahih Muslim that the Imams
didn’t know about," as some of the unlearned seriously suggest today,
but rather a difference of opinion in hadith authentication involving
the highest levels of shari‘a scholarship.
BIBLIOGRAPHY :
Author : © Shaykh Nuh Keller
This article was taken with the permission of Khalil Abdur-Rashid Draper.
