The ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb remarked: “What, then, prevents it from being the case that Ibn Arʿarah actually heard it from Muʿādh?”
I reply: Abū Bakr is right—especially since Ibrāhīm was one of the senior, dedicated students of ḥadīth.
Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Muṭahhar al-Shāfiʿī related to us—as I read the text to him in the year 693 AH—on the authority of ʿAbd al-Muʿizz ibn Muḥammad al-Bazzāz. Tamīm ibn Abī Saʿīd and Zāhir ibn Ṭāhir, each independently, informed us, saying:
Abū Saʿd Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Adīb informed us; Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥamdān narrated to us in the year 374 AH; Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṣūfī narrated to us; Ibrāhīm ibn Arʿarah narrated to us; Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, from Shuʿbah, from al-Aʿmash, from Mujāhid, from Ibn ʿAbbās, reported:
“The Prophet ﷺ used to touch the [Black Stone] Corner with his staff and then kiss the staff.”
Yaḥyā said, “This is not written in my notebook.”
This ḥadīth possesses a sound chain, yet it is singular and unique.
Al-Nasāʾī also transmitted it from ʿUthmān ibn Khurrāzādh, from Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Arʿarah (1); thus we have obtained it with an isnād elevated by two levels.
In that same year (2) there died: Aḥmad ibn Naṣr al-Khuzaʿī the martyr, Umayyah ibn Bisṭām, and Abū