Thread by @PhDniX

In a well-known Hadith, the prophet is said to have heard the recitation of ʾAbū Mūsā and said: laqad ʾūtiya hāḏā min mazāmīr ʾāli dāwūd "This man has been given of the sweet voices (flutes) of the house of David"
sunnah.com/nasai:1020

There might be a biblical subtext here🧵

As @bnuyaminim pointed out to me, David is explicitly described in 1 Chronicles 25 to have appointed temple musicians. Could the mazāmīr ʾāl Dāwūd be referring to these temple musicians? The use of the word mazāmīr here may also significant.

biblegateway.com/passage/?searc…

Where zamara only refers to playing wind instruments in Arabic, the Aramaic zmar primarily means 'to sing', a meaning more readily obvious in the current context.

mazāmīr may also be the plural of mazmūr 'psalm', and the psalms are traditionally closely related to David.

David himself was believed to be a gifted singer, and the author of a good number of the psalms.
So Mohammed may have intended: "This man is reciting (so beautifully it is like it's) from psalms of David's court!."

Such an interpretation isn't entirely without problems. The ʾĀl tends to be understood in a descent manner, so ʾĀl Dāwūd would tend to mean "Descendants of David", which in the old testament the court singers are decidedly not. Can ʾĀl refer to the people of a kingdom/court?

Commentators seem to have been confused by ʾāl, since David is the one that is the psalmist and the singer mazāmīr ʾĀl Dāwūd must just refer to "the sweet voice of David" not the family of David. That interpretation shows up in this translation:
sunnah.com/muslim:793e

Thus al-Ḫaṭṭābī notes: "He intended with 'The House of David', David himself specifically, because no one has been mentioned of the House of David who was given a voice as sweet as David had been given."

https://twitter.com/OneofYoda/status/1460592982671994887

Even accepting the odd claim that 'House of David' could mean just 'David', that doesn't strike me as the natural reading here. Why would mazāmīr be in the plural then? Did David have multiple sweet voices?

The multitude of mazāmīr, strikes me we should take the ʾāl as literal.

Anyway, an interesting curiosity, not entirely sure what to make of it, but I wanted to share the possible connection with Chronicles I. Perhaps the connection will ring a bell for someone and make able to make more sense of it.

Just some final speculation: could the hadith have been misunderstood? Was ʾAbū Mūsā reciting the bible instead of the Quran, and the prophet said: "This one has been given the Psalms of the House of David!", noticing, rightly, that ʾAbū Mūsā was reciting the Biblical psalms?

* I Chronicles (can you tell I don't read the bible very often? :P)

ADDENDUM: @DerMenschensohn pointed out that the Quran quite clearly uses ʾāl Firʿawn quite clearly to mean "the kingdom/court of Firʿawn" rather than the "kinsmen".

e.g. quran.com/2/50. So that settles that loose end.

https://twitter.com/DerMenschensohn/status/1460645502261899272

ADDENDUM 2: Not only is @DerMenschensohn on point with noticing the use of ʾĀl Firʿawn, but they had already noticed the potential biblical connotation of this Hadith.

https://twitter.com/DerMenschensohn/status/1451706651782828038