It is narrated from Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "None of you should point a sword at his brother, for perhaps Satan may pull (the sword) in his hand and he would fall into one of the pits of the Fire." Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) said that he heard this hadith from Sayyiduna Sahl bin Sa'd al-Sa'idi (may Allah be pleased with him), who heard it from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). Imam Abu Bakr said: Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah's (may Allah be pleased with him) eagerness for knowledge drove him to hear a report that he had not heard directly from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), even from someone who narrated less than he did. And the only people who attack the hadith of Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) are those whose hearts Allah has blinded, so that they do not understand the meanings of the hadith. Such people are either a "Mu'attil Jahmi", who finds those hadith contrary to his disbelieving creed and so reviles Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) and accuses him of things Allah Almighty has kept him free of, in order to deceive the common people into thinking that his hadith do not establish proof. Or he is a "Khariji", who considers it lawful to raise the sword against the Ummah of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and does not accept obedience to any caliph or imam; when he finds the narrations of Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) contrary to his misguided way and finds no means of rejecting them with proof and evidence, his only recourse is to attack him. Or he is a "Qadari", who has separated himself from Islam and declared disbelievers those Muslims who believe in Allah's eternal decree; when he sees the narrations of Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) affirming divine decree, he has no proof for his position, which is founded on disbelief and polytheism, except to say that the hadith of Abu Hurayrah cannot be used as evidence. Or he is an "ignorant one" who claims (knowledge of) fiqh but seeks it from the wrong places; when he hears a hadith that goes against his preferred school, he speaks against the person of Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), but if the same hadith agrees with his school, he presents it as proof. These misguided sects denied those hadith of Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) whose meanings they could not understand; by the will of Allah, Mighty and Majestic, I will mention some of them. At this point Imam Abu Bakr (may Allah have mercy on him) mentioned the hadith of Sayyidah Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her) that I have mentioned before, the hadith about a woman being punished because of a cat, the hadith about praying after Jumu'ah together with the hadith of Sayyiduna Ibn Umar (may Allah be pleased with them both) that appears to conflict with it, and the hadith about performing ablution from what has been cooked on fire; mentioning them and discussing them would take long. Imam al-Hakim said: By the will of Allah, I mention the senior Companions who narrated from Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him). They include Zayd bin Thabit, Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, Abdullah bin Abbas, Abdullah bin Umar, Abdullah bin al-Zubayr, Ubayy bin Ka'b, Jabir bin Abdullah, Sayyidah Aishah, al-Miswar bin Makhramah, Uqbah bin al-Harith, Abu Musa al-Ash'ari, Anas bin Malik, al-Sa'ib bin Yazid, Abu Rafi' the freed slave of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), Abu Umamah bin Sahl, Abu al-Tufayl, Abu Nadrah al-Ghifari, Abu Ruhm al-Ghifari, Shaddad bin al-Had, Abu Hadrad Abdullah bin Hadrad al-Aslami, Abu Razin al-Uqayli, Wathilah bin al-Asqa', Qabisah bin Dhu'ayb, Amr bin al-Hamiq, al-Hajjaj al-Aslami, Abdullah bin Ukaym, al-Agharr al-Juhani and al-Sharid bin Suwayd (may Allah be pleased with them all). The number of Companions who narrated from him thus reaches 28. As for the Successors, there is none among them more eminent, more famous, more honoured or more learned than the students of Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), and mentioning them here would take long because of their great number. May Allah protect us from opposing the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), the chosen Companions, the imams of the Successors and the imams of the Muslims after them, in the matter of the one who preserved the laws of the religion for us, namely Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him).