{"id":2561,"date":"2013-01-31T10:57:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T10:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/?p=2561"},"modified":"2013-01-27T11:08:14","modified_gmt":"2013-01-27T11:08:14","slug":"qa-hadeeth-about-not-sleeping-alon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/qa-hadeeth-about-not-sleeping-alon.htm","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Hadeeth about not Sleeping Alone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Name of Allaah…<\/em><\/p>\n

QUESTION:<\/strong> Is there a hadeeth in which sleeping alone has been prohibited and, if so, what is the proper understanding of this hadeeth? Someone read that on a website providing tips on how not to miss Fajr, and one of those tips was not to sleep alone.\u00a0It said al-Albaanee authenticated the hadeeth in as-Silsilatus-Saheehah<\/em>.<\/p>\n

ANSWER:<\/strong> There does exist a hadeeth in the Musnad<\/em> of\u00a0Ahmad (2\/91)\u00a0which alledgedly states that the Messenger of Allaah (may Allaah raise his rank and grant him peace) prohibited people from sleeping alone:<\/p>\n

\u0646\u0647\u0649 \u0639\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u0648\u062d\u062f\u0629 \u0623\u0646 \u064a\u0628\u064a\u062a \u0627\u0644\u0631\u062c\u0644 \u0648\u062d\u062f\u0647 \u0623\u0648 \u064a\u0633\u0627\u0641\u0631 \u0648\u062d\u062f\u0647<\/h2>\n

He forbade (us) from seclusion: that a man sleeps alone or travels alone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The chain appears to be authentic at first glance, since all of the narrators are from the narrators used in the two Saheeh<\/em> collections of al-Bukhaaree and Muslim, except for one who was not used in Saheeh Muslim<\/em>, Aboo ‘Ubayd ‘Abdul-Waahid ibn Waasil al-Haddaad.\u00a0<\/strong> At face value, scholars have graded its chain\u00a0to be\u00a0saheeh<\/em> (authentic), one of them being the great scholar of Hadeeth and its sciences, Muhammad Naasir ad-Deen al-Albaanee in his Silsilah Saheehah<\/em> (#60), as mentioned in the question.<\/p>\n

Al-Haythamee said about this hadeeth in Majma’ az-Zawaa’id<\/em> (8\/104), “Its narrators are from the narrators of the Saheeh<\/em> (collections of al-Bukhaaree and\/or Muslim).”\u00a0<\/strong> I learned a very important thing about this kind of statement from al-Haythamee, when he refrains from calling the chain or the hadeeth saheeh<\/em>, and suffices with profiling the narrators as reliable – that this is not sufficient as authentication<\/strong>, as\u00a0other factors are involved in declaring a hadeeth authentic beyond the reliability of\u00a0its narrators, like the connectivity of the chain and\u00a0the absence of any hidden defects. In fact, when al-Haythamee refrains from calling the hadeeth or its chain saheeh<\/em>, there is often\u00a0a hidden defect somewhere in the chain, a very fine point of hadeeth criticism I learned from al-Albaanee himself, from his highly beneficial hadeeth commentary in his two massive works – as-Saheehah <\/em>and adh-Dha’eefah.<\/em><\/p>\n

Furthermore, referring to the\u00a0narrators as\u00a0being from those used in the Saheeh<\/em> collections of al-Bukhaaree and Muslim is\u00a0insufficient\u00a0by itself to establish their reliability in a general sense for a number of reasons, the easiest of which to explain in English would be that sometimes\u00a0al-Bukhaaree and Muslim only relied on a narrator when he was maqroon<\/em>, or paired with someone else relaying the\u00a0same narration – meaning they would not rely\u00a0on his narration independently.\u00a0 This\u00a0connects us directly to this hadeeth…<\/em><\/p>\n

The narrator, Aboo ‘Ubayd al-Haddaad<\/strong>, was from those used by al-Bukhaaree, when paired with another narrator, not independently,\u00a0as mentioned by ath-Thahabee in al-Meezaan<\/em>.\u00a0 This helps us understand the criticism levelled\u00a0against him regarding his precision as a narrator, while he was from those used in Saheeh al-Bukhaaree,<\/em> the most authentic source book of Hadeeth available.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Aboo ‘Ubayd al-Haddaad\u00a0<\/strong>has narrated this hadeeth from his shaykh, ‘Aasim ibn Muhammad, as\u00a0eight or nine\u00a0other reliable students did, except<\/strong> that none of them mentioned sleeping alone, their narrations\u00a0only mention travelling!<\/p>\n

From this, we can understand clearly that the mention of sleeping alone in this narration was a mistake<\/strong> added by Aboo ‘Ubayd, and thus is not authentic as a hadeeth of the Messenger (may Allaah raise his rank and grant him peace).<\/p>\n

This very fine of point of criticism of this hadeeth can only be detected when gathering the chains together and inspecting them very closely, as done by\u00a0a\u00a0number of scholars and hadeeth researchers who have come to this\u00a0same\u00a0conclusion.\u00a0 The one most worthy of mention was the great scholar of Hadeeth criticism of Yemen, Muqbil ibn Haadee al-Waadi’ee (may Allaah have mercy on him), in his book, Ahaadeeth Mu’allah Thaahiruhas-Sihhah<\/em> (#269).<\/p>\n

In conclusion, the part of the hadeeth mentioning\u00a0the prohibition of sleeping alone is not authentic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Even without this hadeeth, however,\u00a0it is still an acceptable point to say that\u00a0one way to wake up for Fajr prayer on time is to sleep with or around others who can help each other to wake up together at the right time.\u00a0 And Allaah knows best.<\/p>\n

Written by: Moosaa Richardson<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Name of Allaah… QUESTION: Is there a hadeeth in which sleeping alone has been prohibited and, if so, what is the proper understanding of this hadeeth? Someone read that on a website providing tips on how not to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[347,85,87,86,64,88,180],"tags":[158,371,369,222,372,367,368,251,334,366,370,115],"class_list":["post-2561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corrections-2","category-fiqh-islamic-rulings","category-general-reminders","category-hadeeth-studies","category-original-articles","category-prayer","category-questions-answers","tag-al-albaanee","tag-al-haythamee","tag-fajr-prayer","tag-hadeeth","tag-hadeeth-criticism","tag-hadeeth-studies-2","tag-muqbil","tag-silsilah-dhaeefah","tag-silsilah-saheehah","tag-sleeping-alone","tag-traveling-alone","tag-unauthentic-hadeeth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2561"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2567,"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561\/revisions\/2567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bakkah.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}