“They can stone my grave if they want to!”: A Fascinating Report Concerning the Permissibility of Mutʿa (Temporary Marriage)

Al-Bukhārī (d. 256) and Muslim (d. 261) transmit via their chains to al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya (d. c. 100) who reports from two companions Salamah b. al-Akwaʿ and Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh that a herald came to them and announced: “The Messenger of Allah has permitted you to engage in mutʿa!”

This canonical report (see: https://sunnah.com/bukhari:5117; https://sunnah.com/muslim:1405a) indicates that mutʿa was permissible at some point in time although Sunni orthodoxy argues that this permission was later abrogated.

However, a fascinating report which survives only in a single source: the little-studied musnad of the Sunni hadith compiler Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Hārūn al-Ruwayānī (d. 307) preserves more of the actual conversation between al-Ḥasan and Salamah beyond the above truncated statement.

Al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya, himself a grandson of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, is quoted as saying to ʿUbādah b. al-Walīd, the grandson of the companion ʿUbādah b. al-Ṣāmit: “The people in my household refuse to agree with me about this mutʿa (they say) ‘(it is) ḥalāl’ and that the Messenger of Allah permitted it whereas I oppose them in it, so let us go to Salamah b. al-Akwaʿ and ask him about it, for he is one of the righteous and early companions of the Prophet.”

The duo set out for Salamah and meet him in Bīlāt (a location close to the Prophet’s masjid), by the residence of Marwān b. al-Ḥakam (the governor). Salamah is now old, grown blind, and is being led by a guide. The following exchange ensues:

Al-Ḥasan: “Do stop so that me and my companion can ask you about a ḥadīth”
Salamah: “Who are you?”
Al-Ḥasan: “I am the son of Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib”
Salamah: “The son of my brother! Go ahead - what do you want to ask me about?”
Al-Ḥasan: “The mutʿa of women”
Salamah: “O the son of my brother, conceal this ḥadīth from me as long as I am alive and narrate it when I am dead so they can stone my grave if they want to after that! The Messenger of Allah instructed us (to engage in it) and we engaged in it until Allah took him away. Allah did not send down any taḥrīm (prohibition) for it nor was there any prohibition from the Messenger of Allah about it!”

Notes: The report has a fair chain per Sunni rijāl standards. Ibn Isḥāq (the famous author of the sīra) is known for his tadlīs but is specifying simāʿa in this case. Hārūn al-Shāmī was a scribe of Ibn Isḥāq and praised for his accuracy by Ibn al-Madīnī. Bukhārī personally met Hārūn’s son ʿAbdallāh and did not criticize him. Both father and son were included by Ibn Ḥibbān in his Kitāb al-Thiqāt. The remaining narrators are indisputably thiqah.

We can derive a number of salient points from this exchange but foremost in my mind is how we have lost the context behind quite a number of reports which were truncated and are preserved in an atomistic manner.

It is also significant that al-Ḥasan states that the people of his household, that is the Alids, were all united in deeming it permissible with him being the sole exception. This would surely include his contemporary ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 94) and Abū Jaʿfar al-Bāqir (d. 114) as is maintained in the Imāmī corpus.

The fact that Salamah was apprehensive of narrating this ḥadīth which contradicts the prohibition set by ʿUmar and later perpetuated by the Umayyads provides a window into how socially and even punitively problematic it was to go against the policy of the shaykhayn by this time.

Reference: Musnad al-Ruwyānī (ed. Ayman ʿAlī Abū Yamānī), v. 2, pp. 259-260 (https://shamela.ws/book/13161/1323).