5008 — Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Bahrānī narrated to us that he read in the original manuscript of Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh. And Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, his son, narrated to him, saying: My father narrated to me, Ḍamḍam narrated to me, from Shurayḥ ibn ʿUbayd, who said:

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And it is likewise in the Muwaṭṭaʾ in the transmission of Abū Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī (2574).

It is also in the Muwaṭṭaʾ 2/986 in the transmission of Yaḥyā al-Laythī as a mursal report, and likewise it is with Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr in al-Tamhīd 5/169, and in al-Tajrīd p. 51, and Ibn Ḥajar in al-Ittiḥāf 8/323, and al-Zurqānī in Sharḥ al-Muwaṭṭaʾ 4/403. ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar is not mentioned in it. And in the printed edition it occurred as a musnad report, which is an error.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said, commenting on the mursal transmission: Thus Yaḥyā narrated it, from Mālik, from Zayd ibn Aslam, as a mursal report, and I do not think anyone other than him transmitted it as mursal from Mālik. A group of narrators transmitted it as connected (mawṣūl) from Mālik, among them al-Qaʿnabī (as in the transmission of Abū Dāwūd here), Ibn Wahb, Ibn al-Qāsim, Ibn Bukayr, Ibn Nāfiʿ, Muṭarrif, and al-Tutīsī — all of them narrated it from Mālik, from Zayd ibn Aslam, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, from the Prophet ﷺ. And that is the correct version. The hearing of Zayd ibn Aslam from Ibn ʿUmar is sound.

Al-Bukhārī (5767) also extracted it via the chain of Mālik.

Al-Bukhārī (5146) extracted it via the chain of Sufyān, and al-Tirmidhī (2147) via the chain of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad — both of them from Zayd ibn Aslam, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar.

It is connected (mawṣūl) in Musnad Aḥmad (4651) and Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān (5718). Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said in al-Tamhīd 5/170–171: It has been narrated from the Prophet ﷺ regarding his saying, "Indeed, some eloquence is magic," through other chains besides this one, from the ḥadīth of ʿAmmār and others. There is disagreement concerning the intended meaning of this report. It was said: the intent is to censure eloquence, since it was compared to magic, and magic is forbidden and blameworthy — because of what it contains of depicting falsehood in the form of truth, and of grandiloquence and affectation of speech. And there has come regarding the garrulous and the affected speakers what has come of censure. A group of Mālik's companions adopted this view, and they adduced as evidence Mālik's inclusion of it in his Muwaṭṭaʾ in the chapter on what is disliked of speech. But the majority of the people of letters and those knowledgeable in the Arabic language refused [to accept this], insisting rather that his saying ﷺ, "Indeed, some eloquence is magic," is praise, commendation, and preference for eloquence, and an extolling of it — and that is what the context and wording of the report indicate.