He said...

He said: We are forbidden by Umar…and Umar used to say: Decrease number of traditions you report from the Messenger of Allah except those that can be applied in life. 63 No wonder to see Umar doing so, since the only sources he used to depend on were the Qur’an and the practical Sunnah (the Prophet’s acts).

Al-Bukhari has reported on the authority of Ibn Abbas that he said: When the Messenger of Allah (S) approached his last hour (on death-bed), he was surrounded by many men among whom was Umar ibn al-Khattab; thereat he (S) said: Help me to write for you a book after which you will never go astray. Umar said: “The Prophet is overpowered by sickness, and you have the Qur’an among you, so we are sufficed by the Book of Allah.” In another narration, he said: The Prophet is hallucinating.

In his book al-Tabaqat, Ibn Sa’d reports on the authority of al-Sa’ib ibn Yazid that he once accompanied Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas from Medina toward Mecca, saying: I never heard him relating any hadith from the Prophet till he returned home. And another time he (Sa’d) was inquired about something which he couldn’t conceive, when he said: I am afraid of reporting one hadith to which you may add a hundred!

(It is to be known that Sa’d was considered among the leading and the ten men promised with paradise, 64 as claimed by them [Sunnites]). ‘Amr ibn Maymun is reported to have said: “I kept on frequenting to Abd Allah ibn Mas’ud throughout a whole year, in which I never heard him narrating the Prophet’s traditions, or declaring: “The Messenger of Allah said.” But once upon a day he related a hadith with these words being spontaneously uttered by him: “The Messenger of Allah said”!

when he felt distressed, that I witnessed drops of sweat gliding down from his forehead!! Saying then: God-willing, either superior to that, or near it, or lower than it. In another narration by Ibn Sa’d, on the authority of Alqamah ibn Qays that he said: Abd Allah ibn Mas’ud used to stand up rising every Thursday night, and not even once I heard him saying: “The Messenger of Allah said,” except only one time.

Thereat I looked at him, when he was leaning on a staff, seeing the staff to be vibrating. Al-Daraqutri reported also on the authority of Abd al-Rahman ibn Ka’b as saying: I said to Abu Qatadah: Relate to me something you heard from the Messenger of Allah. He said: I fear my tongue to make a slip in a word never uttered by the Messenger of Allah.