Arba'un 32 — no harm and no reciprocating harm

الأربعون 32 — لا ضرر ولا ضرار

The hadith of Abu Sa'id al-Khudri that the Prophet said 'no harm and no reciprocating harm' — the thirty-second of al-Nawawi's Forty and of Ibn Rajab's commentary; al-Nawawi calls it hasan, transmitted by Ibn Majah, al-Daraqutni and others with a full chain and by Malik in the Muwatta' mursal through Amr ibn Yahya from his father, dropping Abu Sa'id, with routes that strengthen one another; Ibn Rajab clarifies that Ibn Majah did not in fact carry Abu Sa'id's version — it comes through al-Daraqutni, al-Hakim and al-Bayhaqi via Uthman ibn Muhammad ibn Uthman ibn Rabi'a, 'al-Darawardi told us', from Amr ibn Yahya al-Mazini from his father from Abu Sa'id in the fuller wording 'no harm and no reciprocating harm; whoever harms, God harms him, and whoever makes things difficult, God makes things difficult for him' — al-Hakim grading its chain sahih on Muslim's condition and al-Bayhaqi noting Uthman alone narrates it from al-Darawardi; as for Malik's mursal, Ibn Abd al-Barr reports no one diverges from it and that it has no sound full chain, then carries a connected route through Abd al-Malik ibn Mu'adh al-Nasibi from al-Darawardi — whose transmissions from memory Ahmad used to weaken and pay no heed to, Malik's word unquestionably outweighing his — while the Andalusian memoriser Khalid ibn Sa'd declared 'no harm and no reciprocating harm' never established with a full chain; the commentators read the hadith as negating harm both initiatory and retaliatory — that a Muslim neither harms himself or another nor answers harm with harm — a supreme legal maxim from which Ibn Rajab, in his long commentary, draws the removal of hardship from the Law's impositions (Jami' al-Ulum wal-Hikam pp. 667–683).