Response to: Bukhari Narrating Hadeeth in Short Form Due to Love for Bani Umayyah?

The following is a response to SlaveOfAhlubait’s article entitled: “Bukhari Narrating Hadeeth in Short Form Due to Love for Bani Umayyah?” The article can be found here.

SoA quotes a narration from Al-Bukhari that includes the following text:

Then ‘Abdur Rahman bin Abu Bakr told him something whereupon Marwan ordered that he be arrested.

Then, SoA quotes another version of the narration, from the Tafseer of Ibn Abi Hatim through Al-Albani’s Al-Silsila Al-Saheeha 7/721-722, in which Abd Al-Rahman bin Abi Bakr says:

Abdur Rehman replied: O Marwan! Are you not son of the Cursed one, who was cursed by Holy Prophet (asws)?

SoA uses this second narration in order to make it seem that Al-Bukhari’s biased caused him to shorten the hadith. However, when we return to the opinions of the scholars, we find that this action cannot be attributed to Al-Bukhari.

Al-Albani 7/724 continues by quoting the opinion of Ibn Hajar, who weakened the words attributed to Abd Al-Rahman bin Abi Bakr by saying that this addition cannot be found in the narration of Al-Bukhari. In other words, he is saying that Al-Bukhari’s version is stronger due to the quality of the narrators.

However, Al-Albani himself responded, “What is the point of this response since he knows that the addition is authentic in its chain and that it came from a path that is different from the path of Al-Bukhari?!”

In other words, Al-Albani is not accusing Al-Bukhari for the different wordings, but rather is saying that this narration comes through a completely different route, which is completely correct. The narration of Al-Bukhari comes through Yusuf bin Mahak, while the narration of Ibn Abi Hatim from Abdullah Al-Bahee. So, these are two narrations from two different people about a single event. In conclusion, there is no evidence that suggests that this is the doing of Al-Bukhari, nor that he is manipulating narrations in order to protect Bani Umayyah.