The False Accusation of Drinking Wine against Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him)
Abdullah bin Buraydah stated that:
دَخَلْتُ أَنَا وَأَبِي عَلَى مُعَاوِيَةَ، فَأَجْلَسَنَا عَلَى الْفُرُشِ، ثُمَّ أُتِينَا بِالطَّعَامِ، فَأَكَلْنَا، ثُمَّ أُتِينَا بِالشَّرَابِ، فَشَرِبَ مُعَاوِيَةُ، ثُمَّ نَاوَلَ أَبِي، ثُمَّ قَالَ: مَا شَرِبْتُهُ مُنْذُ حَرَّمَهُ رَسُولُ اللهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ. قَالَ مُعَاوِيَةُ: كُنْتُ أَجْمَلَ شَبَابِ قُرَيْشٍ، وَأَجْوَدَهُ ثَغْرًا، وَمَا شَيْءٌ كُنْتُ أَجِدُ لَهُ لَذَّةً كَمَا كُنْتُ أَجِدُهُ وَأَنَا شَابٌّ غَيْرَ اللَّبَنِ، أَوْ إِنْسَانٍ حَسَنِ الْحَدِيثِ يُحَدِّثُنِي۔
“My father (Buraydah al-Aslami, may Allah be pleased with him) and I came to Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him), and he (may Allah be pleased with him) seated us on the bedding. Then food was brought and we ate. Then a drink was brought, which Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) drank (Note: in the Arabic language, the word “sharab” is used for every drink), then he offered it to my father. Then he (may Allah be pleased with him) said: I have never drunk it since the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made it forbidden. Then Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: I was the most handsome of the young men of Quraysh and had the best teeth, and in those days of youth nothing gave me more pleasure than milk, and also a person who speaks well and tells me good things (he was the most beloved to me).”
Maulana Ghulam Mustafa Zahir Amanpuri (may Allah preserve him) wrote about this narration:
“The chain is da’if (weak). The narration of Husayn bin Waqid from Abdullah bin Buraydah is munkar (rejected) (and this narration is through that very route). Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
عبد الله بن بريدة الذى روى عنه حسين بن واقد ما أنكرها۔
‘How rejected are the narrations of Abdullah bin Buraydah that Husayn bin Waqid reports from him!’
This criticism is explained in detail (jarh mufassar) and cannot be rejected.”
Even if this narration is accepted as sahih (authentic), it does not in any way prove that Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) drank wine. But Mirza sahib has distorted the translation of this narration to try to give the impression that Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) drank wine. In his research paper “The True Background of the Incident of Karbala,” on page 15, he mentioned this narration in these words:
“Abdullah bin Buraydah, the Tabi’i (may Allah have mercy on him), says: My father Buraydah (may Allah be pleased with him) and I went to visit Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him). Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) seated us on a floor seat (that is, a carpet). Then food was brought, which we ate. Then a drink was brought before us, which Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) drank and then handed (the vessel of that drink) to my father, upon which he (Buraydah, may Allah be pleased with him) said: Since the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made this drink forbidden, I have never drunk it since then. Then Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) began to say: I was the most handsome young man of the young men of Quraysh and had beautiful teeth, and in those days of youth nothing gave me more pleasure than milk and a good storyteller.”
Now Mirza sahib has cheated in this narration in two places. First, according to this narration, he has attributed the sentence of Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him), “I have never drunk it since the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made that drink forbidden,” to Buraydah (may Allah be pleased with him) instead of Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him), and wrote in brackets: “(Buraydah, may Allah be pleased with him) said: Since the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made this drink forbidden…………”. The second fraud he committed is that in this same sentence of Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him), “since the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made that drink forbidden,” he wrote “this” instead of “that”. This gave the impression that Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) drank that drink, but when he offered it to Buraydah (may Allah be pleased with him), Buraydah (may Allah be pleased with him) said that since the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made this drink forbidden, he had not drunk it since then. In this way he tried to prove that the drink Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) drank was wine.
However, this is entirely wrong. In the Arabic text of this narration there is no sentence of Buraydah (may Allah be pleased with him) at all; rather, the entire statement is reported from Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him). The narration is in fact as follows:
ثُمَّ أُتِينَا بِالطَّعَامِ، فَأَكَلْنَا، ثُمَّ أُتِينَا بِالشَّرَابِ، فَشَرِبَ مُعَاوِيَةُ، ثُمَّ نَاوَلَ أَبِي، ثُمَّ قَالَ: مَا شَرِبْتُهُ مُنْذُ حَرَّمَهُ رَسُولُ اللهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ…
“Then food was brought to us, which we ate. Then something to drink was brought to us, and Mu’awiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) drank it, then offered it to my father, then said: I have never drunk it since the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made it forbidden.”
So look: it is perfectly clear in the Arabic text that the statement belongs to Sayyiduna Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him), and the Engineer put it in brackets and attributed it to Sayyiduna Buraydah (may Allah be pleased with him). That is exactly what is called distortion; otherwise, what else is distortion?
Imam al-Haythami (may Allah have mercy on him) also attributed this sentence to Sayyiduna Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him). He (may Allah have mercy on him) quoted this very hadith of Musnad Ahmad with these words:
عَنْ عَبْدِ اللهِ بْنِ بُرَيْدَةَ قَالَ: دَخَلْتُ مَعَ أَبِي عَلَى مُعَاوِيَةَ فَأَجْلَسَنَا عَلَى الْفِرَاشِ ثُمَّ أُتِينَا بِالطَّعَامِ فَأَكَلْنَا، ثُمَّ أُتِينَا بِالشَّرَابِ فَشَرِبَ مُعَاوِيَةُ ثُمَّ نَاوَلَ أَبِي، ثُمَّ قَالَ مُعَاوِيَةُ: كُنْتُ أَجْمَلَ شَبَابِ قُرَيْشٍ وَأَجْوَدَهُ ثَغْرًا وَمَا مِنْ شَيْءٍ أَجِدُ لَهُ لَذَّةً كَمَا كُنْتُ أَجِدُهُ وَأَنَا شَابٌّ غَيْرُ اللَّبَنِ وَإِنْسَانٌ حَسَنُ الْحَدِيثِ يُحَدِّثُنِي۔
“It is narrated from Abdullah ibn Buraydah that I went with my father (Sayyiduna Buraydah al-Aslami, may Allah be pleased with him) to Sayyiduna Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him). So he (may Allah be pleased with him) seated us on the bedding, then food was brought and we ate the food, then a drink was brought, which Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) drank, then he handed it to my father. Then Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: I was the most handsome of the young men of Quraysh and the one with the finest teeth among them, and in those days of my youth nothing gave me more pleasure than milk, and also a person who speaks well, who would tell me good things.”
Then he (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
رواه أحمد ورجاله رجال الصحيح وفى كلام معاوية شىء تركته۔
“Ahmad narrated it, and its narrators are the narrators of the Sahih (al-Bukhari), and in the words of Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) there is something amiss (an error or nakarah, a rejected element) which I have left out.”
Now look: which sentence of this narration did Imam al-Haythami (may Allah have mercy on him) not quote, the one to which he is alluding? It is none other than this very sentence under discussion, and the Imam is attributing this sentence to Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him), which proves Mirza’s self-made bracket false. And the words of Imam al-Haythami (may Allah have mercy on him) further strengthen the statement of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (may Allah have mercy on him) that the narrations of Abdullah ibn Buraydah through Husayn ibn Waqid are munkar (rejected) and wrong, and Allah knows best.
One point is also that this same narration is present in Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah as well, but this sentence is not there at all.
And the second deception regarding this very sentence is this: in “Since the Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared that drink forbidden, I have never drunk it,” by turning “that drink” into “this drink,” he gave the impression that the drink the Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared forbidden is this very drink that Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) was drinking. Whereas in the Arabic text it is: “مَا شَرِبْتُهُ مُنْذُ حَرَّمَهُ رَسُولُ اللهِ“. Now, since the pronoun “hu” (ـهُ) occurs in “شربته” and “حرمه“, its translation is “that” and not “this”! Mirza claims that I can point out the Arabic mistakes of the scholars, but first let him look at the state of his own Arabic.
In any case, the correct translation and meaning of this narration is that Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) drank some drink and then gave it to Sayyiduna Buraydah (may Allah be pleased with him), then Sayyiduna Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) said that I have never drunk wine (or any intoxicating nabidh) since the Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared it forbidden. Then he said that the drink I like most is milk. So this narration proves that Sayyiduna Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) was one who avoided wine greatly, whereas his enemies accuse him of drinking wine on the basis of this very narration.
This narration is also present in Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah with the same chain as the Musnad Ahmad one, which makes the matter even clearer. In it, Abdullah ibn Buraydah relates:
دَخَلْتُ أَنَا وَأَبِي عَلَى مُعَاوِيَةَ، فَأَجْلَسَ أَبِي عَلَى السَّرِيرِ وَأَتَى بِالطَّعَامِ فَأَطْعَمَنَا، وَأَتَى بِشَرَابٍ فَشَرِبَ، فَقَالَ مُعَاوِيَةُ: مَا شَيْءٌ كُنْتُ أَسْتَلِذُّهُ وَأَنَا شَابٌّ فَآخُذُهُ الْيَوْمَ إِلَّا اللَّبَنَ، فَإِنِّي آخُذُهُ كَمَا كُنْتُ آخُذُهُ قَبْلَ الْيَوْمِ وَالْحَدِيثُ الْحَسَنُ۔
“My father (Buraydah al-Aslami, may Allah be pleased with him) and I went to Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him), so he seated my father on the couch, and he brought food, and we ate it, and they brought a drink, which he (may Allah be pleased with him) drank. Then Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: In the days of my youth I did not feel pleasure in anything more than milk, and indeed even today I take milk just as I used to take it before this day, and likewise good conversation (which I also love to listen to with great eagerness).”
So this makes it clear that Sayyiduna Muawiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) was drinking not some forbidden drink but milk, otherwise the Companions sitting nearby would have strongly objected. Therefore the Engineer’s objection and difficulty is false. We do not call Mirza an open Rafidi Shia, but this whole conduct is theirs, just as he creates doubts and suspicions regarding Abu Bakr and Umar (may Allah be pleased with them both).
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