Among the reports on ablution is his statement concerning its virtue:

From Anas, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “If a man possesses a single righteous quality, Allah will rectify all his deeds by means of it. When a man performs purification for his prayer, Allah expiates his sins through that purification, and his prayer then remains for him as a voluntary act.”

It was narrated by Abu Ya‘la, al-Bazzar, and al-Tabarani in al-Awsat.

I say: This ḥadith is munkar (denounced), as Ibn ʿAdi and Ibn Ḥibbān have both affirmed, and the author has erred in citing it on two counts:

First, he presented it while remaining silent about its status, thereby leading readers to assume it is authentic.

Second, this citation is not his own—as is the case with the rest of the documentation in his book—but is merely taken from al-Mundhiri’s al-Targhīb 1/95 and al-Haythami’s Majmaʿ 1/225, and we have already shown that it