He set that sound chain aside and preferred the version that contains doubt, even though it is weak, anomalous, and—were it to be authentic—still unfit to serve as a counter-evidence, as has already been shown.

Third: Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, better known as Imām al-Bukhārī, author of the Ṣaḥīḥ.

Al-Tirmidhī records the report from him (1/152). Although he does not cite al-Bukhārī’s exact wording, he refers the reader to the wording of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar, which affirms the matter explicitly, by adding the note: “Its like (nahwahu),” thereby indicating that the two narrations coincide in meaning.

Thus Tirmidhī’s remark—while it does not, as al-ʿIrāqī imagined, demand that al-Bukhārī’s wording be identical to that of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar—certainly allows for, indeed expressly points to, their identity in meaning, as is explained in the science of ḥadīth methodology.¹