you think that the rivers of Paradise are trenches in the ground! No, by Allāh, they flow on the surface of the earth, with one of their banks being pearls and the other rubies, and their soil is pure musk. He said: I asked: What is "pure"? He said: That which has no mixture. Ibn Mardawayh narrated it in his "Tafsīr" from Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad: Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyá narrated to us, Mahdī ibn Ḥakīm narrated to us, Yazīd ibn Hārūn informed us, al-Jurayrī from Muʿāwiyah ibn Qurrah from Anas ibn Mālik who said: The Messenger of Allāh (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) said: and he mentioned it as such in a marfūʿ form. I said: The isnād of Ibn Abī al-Dunyā is authentic, all its men are reliable, the men of the two Shaykhs except for Yaʿqūb ibn ʿUbayd - who is al-Nahartīrī - Ibn Abī Ḥātim said (4/2/210): "I heard from him with my father, and he is truthful." He has a biography in "Tārīkh Baghdād" (14/280): Mahdī ibn Ḥakīm contradicted him, narrating it from Yazīd ibn Hārūn in a marfūʿ form with Ibn Mardawayh, and I did not find a biography for Mahdī, but the mawqūf is authentic as I have seen, and it is considered marfūʿ because it is not said from personal opinion, especially since it has been authenticated as marfūʿ from the first path. And similarly, what Sufyān al-Thawrī narrated from ʿAmr ibn Murrah from Abū ʿUbaydah from Masrūq regarding the verse: *"And flowing water"* he said: It flows without trenches. Ibn al-Qayyim mentioned it. And its isnād is broken but authentic. I said: And in what has preceded is evidence of the invalidity of what Ibn Mardawayh extracted in "al-Durr al-Manthūr" (6/402) from Ibn ʿAbbās (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu) regarding his saying: *"Indeed, We have granted you al-Kawthar"* he said: "A river in Paradise, its depth [in the ground] is seventy thousand leagues." Al-Mundhirī attributed it (4/254-255) to Ibn Abī al-Dunyā and he has the addition, and he indicated its weakness, rather it is, in my opinion, objectionable due to its contradiction with this ḥadīth of Anas. And Allāh knows best