Bayhaqi 11255 — The buyer dies bankrupt before paying the price

Abu Bakr bin Abd al-Rahman bin al-Harith bin Hisham (may Allah have mercy on him) said that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Whoever sells some goods, and then the buyer becomes bankrupt, and the seller has not yet received any of the price, and he finds his goods exactly as they were, then he has more right to them. And if the buyer dies, then the owner of the goods shares equally with the other creditors." Imam al-Shafi'i (may Allah have mercy on him) said: The hadith I have adopted, namely the hadith of Ibn Khaldah, is more worthy in my view, because it is connected (mawsul), and in it the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) mentioned both bankruptcy and death together, whereas the hadith of Ibn Shihab is broken (munqati'). Even if it did not contradict others, it would still not be established in the view of the scholars of hadith. Moreover, even if this were the only reason for abandoning it, it would be necessary for whoever knows hadith to abandon it on two counts, along with the fact that the hadith which Abu Bakr bin Abd al-Rahman narrates from Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) does not contain the words that Ibn Shihab narrates from him as mursal, provided he narrated it in full, and I do not know from whom he narrated it. Perhaps he narrated the first part of the hadith and expressed his own opinion in the second part. In the narration of Abu Bakr from Sayyiduna Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), the final words are "fa-huwa ahaqqu bihi" (then he has more right to it). This indicates that the words after that are the saying of Abu Bakr and not the words of the hadith. And the connected version that Isma'il bin Ayyash narrated from al-Zubaydi from Imam al-Zuhri is not correct.