your rows, and stand close together, for I can see you from behind my back.’
Shujāʿ and al-Ḥasan add:
Anas said, ‘I saw one of us press his shoulder against the shoulder of his companion and his foot against his foot; were I to do that today, one of you would shy away as if he were a skittish mule.’ (1)
This is an authentic hadith, though singular in transmission.
We have come across many instances where Abū Khaythamah’s narrations coincide in the Musnad of Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī.
Mention of his son—the eminent, exacting ḥāfiẓ:
131 – Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Abī Khaythamah*
Author of The Major History, a work of abundant benefit.
He heard from: his father; Abū Nuʿaym; Hawdhah ibn Khalīfah; ʿAffān; Muḥammad ibn Sābiq; Abū Salamah al-Tabūdhakī; Abū Ghassān al-Nahdī; Aḥmad ibn Yūnus; Quṭbah ibn al-ʿAlāʾ; Muslim ibn Ibrāhīm; Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī; Mūsā ibn Dāwūd al-Ḍabbī; Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Marrūdhī; Saʿīd ibn Sulaymān; Khālid ibn Khidāsh; Surayj ibn al-Nuʿmān; and Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb,