Salim bin Abdullah narrates from his father that after the passing of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), Sayyiduna Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, Sayyiduna Umar bin al-Khattab and some other Companions (may Allah be pleased with them) sat together in a gathering and began discussing the greatest of the major sins, but they had no definite knowledge on the matter upon which they could settle. So they sent me to Sayyiduna Abdullah bin Amr (may Allah be pleased with them both) to ask him about it, and he told me that the greatest of the major sins is drinking wine. I came back and told them, but they rejected this, and all of them set off together towards his house until they reached him. Then he told them that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "One of the kings of the Children of Israel seized a man and gave him the choice either to drink wine, or to kill someone, or to commit fornication, or to eat the flesh of swine, or else, if he refused, they would kill him. The man chose to drink wine, but when he had drunk it, he did not refuse anything that they demanded of him (that is, he committed all the sins)"; and the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said to us in reply: "Whoever drinks it, Allah Almighty does not accept his prayer for forty nights; and he does not die with any of that wine in his bladder except that Paradise is made forbidden to him because of it; and if he dies within those forty nights, he dies the death of Jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic ignorance)." This hadith is sahih (authentic) on the condition of Imam Muslim, but the two Shaykhs (Bukhari and Muslim) did not record it.