Khalid al-Madaʾini slipped it to al-Layth, and Qutaybah heard it from him—Allah knows best.

I say: Accepting that premise would imply that al-Layth accepted prompting and narrated what he had not actually heard. That was never his way; rather, he was a rigorously reliable authority. The lapse occurred on Qutaybah’s side. He was a truthful shaykh who transmitted around one hundred thousand reports, so a single erroneous ḥadīth can be excused.

Abū al-Maʿālī Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq the Qurʾān-reciter informed us; al-Fatḥ ibn ʿAbd Allāh informed us; Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar the judge informed us; Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Muslima informed us; ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān reported to us; Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad reported to us; Qutaybah reported to us; ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Darāwardī and Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar narrated to us, from al-ʿAlāʾ, from his father, from Abū Hurayrah, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

“Hasten to perform good deeds before you are overtaken by tribulations like segments of the pitch-black night: a man may wake up as a believer and reach evening a disbeliever, or reach evening as a believer and wake up a disbeliever, selling his religion for some worldly gain.” (1)

Muslim recorded it from Qutaybah, who narrated it from Ismāʿīl; al-Tirmidhī recorded it from him through al-Darāwardī.

In the same year—forty—many others died together with Qutaybah, among them: Suwayd ibn Saʿīd al-Ḥadathānī, Suwayd ibn Naṣr al-Marwazī, Abū Thawr Ibrāhīm ibn Khālid al-Kalbī the jurist, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿAṭṭāb al-Aʿyan, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿĪsā ibn Mā sarjis, Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ al-Jarjarāʾī (2), ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Ghiyāth al-Baṣrī, and Muḥammad ibn Khālid ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṭaḥḥān.