Recordings › BukhariGate Part 1: Sahih Bukhari is NOT so Sahih -Mufti Abu Layth · 30 Aug 2018 › Segment 6 of 17
Nonsensical Arabic in hadith 5492: the alcohol slaughtered by fish and sun
haj pilgrimage hadj hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith maaliki malikite malikiyyah maliki school muftis halaal permitted koran quraan al-quran sura soorah surat suwar soora ayah aya ayat ayaat aayah aayat ulama ulema ulamaa
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This segment32:03 to 36:02 · 3 min 59 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenThe closing words of hadith 5492 are nonsensical Arabic that early scholars crossed out as an error. Later commentators should admit this rather than strain to make sense of it.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth reads the Arabic at the end of hadith 5492, a statement of Abu al-Darda [?] about a cooked dish, and says the sentence makes no sense. He says early Maliki scholars who held the tertiary manuscripts, such as al-Qabisi [?], crossed it out as a mistake, while later commentators including Ibn Hajar kept it, called it awkwardly worded and tried to justify it. He explains their reading: that 'ninan' is taken as the plural of the letter nun and made to mean fish, so the text says the alcohol was slaughtered by the fish and the sun, meaning that Abu al-Darda held that alcohol turned to vinegar may be used, that fish is lawful and that the sun purifies. He says nobody disputes that vinegar from alcohol may be used, citing the report that the best vinegar is the vinegar of your alcohol, or that fish is lawful by the verse on what is in the sea, but that the statement itself is absurd and scholars should admit it rather than perform gymnastics to defend it.
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Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says the closing words of hadith 5492 are a syntactical error that the early scholars rightly crossed out, and that later commentators should admit the sentence is absurd instead of justifying it.
“the classical scholars like lacabisi and these great early maliki legends who were the early founders that had the manuscripts the kind of tertiary manuscripts they cross this out as a mistake because it makes no sense”
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Kind: general teachingTranscript
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the arabic check this out this one's quite hilarious you've got hadith right this is five four nine two it continues from that chapter anyway it ends with abu dhabi saying regarding a particular uh meal that is cooked that was uh it was like a particular kind of food that they had like a soup kind of thing now check this out listen to this arabic
[Laughter] right this is nonsensical arabic this arabic makes no sense okay and what's hilarious is that the classical scholars like lacabisi and these great early maliki legends who were the early founders that had the manuscripts the kind of tertiary manuscripts they cross this out as a mistake because it makes no sense later scholars still embraced it and this and they try to justify what on earth this means and they all seem to you know it's like a few people in a room one person's
justified and they're all like yeah that makes sense to me let me just translate what that says he slaughtered the alcohol ninanu no idea what ninan is do you know what they tried to say ninan is plural of the letter noon you know the letter noon [Laughter] the letter known in arabic they said the plural is ninan which means they're saying noon now means fish just because in the surah nun they said noon might mean a fish so they're saying here ninan means fish because noon the letter noon all of a sudden
means fish what shams and the sun even if okay so the alcohol okay check this out the alcohol was slaughtered by the moons and the sun [Laughter] i mean what on earth is that even on about but then they're all like oh yeah that makes perfect sense that makes brilliant beautiful sense it's like i read all these commentaries people are like no no no no of course i mean it's it's awkwardly worded but it makes beautiful sense i'm like for god's sake at least be honest
so ibn hajj the same thing ibn says oh it's awkwardly worded but it makes sense what he's trying to say okay what they let me tell you what they're trying to say they're trying to say that abu dharda believed that you can turn you can purify alcohol which by the way most scholars believe that alcohol if it's turned into vinegar it can be used as the hadith said that the best of your alcohol best of your vinegar is the alcohol is the vinegar of your alcohol
now so many people used to use that so what they're trying to say is also believe that that you could you know you could kind of use alcohol and have it kind of whatever the fermenting process is and turn it into vinegar okay fine and they're trying to say he believed you could eat fish it was halal to eat fish which everybody believed it was halal to eat fish because the quran says and whatever is in the sea is halal for you but anyway and the sun i don't know what the sun but the sun is is maybe a means of purifying stuff this is what the
so what they're trying to say is by saying you can use purified alcohol sorry you can use alcohol that's turned into vinegar he's using the term you can slaughter alcohol the bahal hamra slaughtered alcohol what slaughtered it the fish did and the sun they've gone through so much the the the gymnastics they've done to try to make sense of that statement nobody's got a problem with saying you can eat fish it's halal that's fine nobody's got a problem with saying you can use vinegar from alcohol
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Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2018-08-30-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/x6sffyrljey/s/6/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2018, August 30). Nonsensical Arabic in hadith 5492: the alcohol slaughtered by fish and sun [Video, segment 2018-08-30-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/x6sffyrljey/s/6/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2018. "Nonsensical Arabic in hadith 5492: the alcohol slaughtered by fish and sun." Video, segment 2018-08-30-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded August 30, 2018. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/x6sffyrljey/s/6/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2018-08-30-S06, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Nonsensical Arabic in hadith 5492: the alcohol slaughtered by fish and sun}}, year = {2018}, month = {8}, date = {2018-08-30}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/x6sffyrljey/s/6/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/x6sffyrljey/s/6/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2018-08-30-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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