He then said: “It is reported from Abū Qatādah that he had a thick jummah (long lock of hair). He asked the Prophet ﷺ about it, and the Prophet ordered him to look after it and to comb it every day.” Al-Nasāʾī narrated the report, while Mālik recorded it in the Muwaṭṭaʾ in the wording: “I said, ‘I have a jummah; should I comb it?’ He answered, ‘Yes, and honor it.’” Because of the Prophet’s statement “and honor it,” Abū Qatādah would sometimes apply oil to his hair twice in a single day.

I say: This ḥadith is not authentic as a narration from Abū Qatādah, owing to a break in its chain of transmission and disorder in its wording.

As for the break, al-Nasāʾī transmitted it in his Sunan, 2/292, through ʿUmar ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Muqaddam, who said: “Yahyā ibn Saʿīd narrated to us from Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir from Abū Qatādah …”

Outwardly the chain looks sound, for its men are trustworthy and are narrators used by the two Ṣaḥīḥs. Yet it contains a hidden flaw: Ibn al-Muqaddam, though reliable, practiced an unusual form of tadlīs (concealed transmission). Ibn Saʿd explained: “He was trustworthy, but he engaged in very intense tadlīs; he would say, ‘I heard,’ or ‘So-and-so narrated to us,’ then fall silent, after which he would name Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, al-Aʿmash, and others….”

For this reason al-Ḥāfiẓ said in the introduction to Fatḥ al-Bārī, p. 431: “They criticized him for frequent tadlīs, and I have found nothing for him in the Ṣaḥīḥ except what is corroborated.”

Nor did he pronounce him reliable in al-Taqrīb; he merely said of him: “He used to practice severe tadlīs.”

Someone of this standing is not accepted as independent evidence—even if he explicitly says “I heard”—unless he has corroboration, and all the more so when he is contradicted. Indeed, Mālik said in his version, 3/624: