Hadith: Monkey Adultery

Sahih Bukhari is considered the most revered collection of Sahih Hadith among traditional Muslims. Among these most “authentic” narrations, we see that ‘Amr bin Maimun claims the following account regarding a she-monkey being stoned for adultery.

Narrated `Amr bin Maimun: During the pre-lslamic period of ignorance I saw a she-monkey surrounded by a number of monkeys. They were all stoning it, because it had committed illegal sexual intercourse. I too, stoned it along with them.

حَدَّثَنَا نُعَيْمُ بْنُ حَمَّادٍ، حَدَّثَنَا هُشَيْمٌ، عَنْ حُصَيْنٍ، عَنْ عَمْرِو بْنِ مَيْمُونٍ، قَالَ رَأَيْتُ فِي الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ قِرْدَةً اجْتَمَعَ عَلَيْهَا قِرَدَةٌ قَدْ زَنَتْ، فَرَجَمُوهَا فَرَجَمْتُهَا مَعَهُمْ‏.‏

Sahih al-Bukhari 3849 https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3849

So many questions come to mind from this narration. Do monkeys have the institution of marriage? How does a monkey commit adultery? Have any modern researchers ever witnessed monkeys stoning another monkey for committing adultery? Was this only how monkeys conducted themselves in the pre-Islamic days of ignorance? Did monkey culture change after the pre-Islamic days of ignorance?

Luckily, Abu Bakr al-Isma’ili, Abu Nu’aym al-Asbahani, and Ibn Asakir provide the most detailed version of this report. The renowned scholar Ibn Hajar wrote the most revered and widely acknowledged commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari, “Fath al-Bari,” provides us al-Is,ma’ili’s version: