about this route, and he replied, “Its chain of transmission is sound.” It was said to him, “Yet Ibn ʿUlayyah did not relate it as a marfūʿ report.” He answered, “Even if Ibn ʿUlayyah failed to preserve its marfūʿ form, the ḥadith’s isnād is still sound.”

Some scholars weakened it by treating it as mawqūf, because Mujāhid narrated it in that form; al-Dāraquṭnī, al-Bayhaqī, al-Mizzī, and Ibn Taymiyyah considered the mawqūf version authentic.

As for the alleged textual inconsistency, this stems from variants that read “three qullas” and others that read “forty qullas.” The answer is that both “three” and “forty” are anomalous; the correct wording is “two qullas.”

Shaykh al-Albānī said: “The ḥadith is ṣaḥīḥ. It was reported by the Five, in addition to al-Dārimī, al-Ṭaḥāwī, al-Dāraquṭnī, al-Ḥākim, al-Bayhaqī, and al-Ṭiyālisī with a sound chain. It was authenticated by al-Ṭaḥāwī, Ibn Khuzaymah, Ibn Ḥibbān, al-Ḥākim, al-Dhahabī, al-Nawawī, and Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, and the charge of textual inconsistency raised by some is untenable.”

Restricting the two qullas to “the qullas of Ḥajar” has no sound marfūʿ basis except through the route of al-Mughīrah b. Ṣiqalāb, who is a discredited transmitter.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī said in al-Muḥarrar: “Al-Ḥākim held that the hadith meets the criteria of the two Shaykhs, for both of them accepted all of its narrators.”

Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah declared: “Most hadith experts grade it ḥasan and cite it as evidence, having answered the objections of its detractors.”

Among those who authenticated the hadith are: Ibn Khuzaymah, Ibn Ḥibbān, Ibn Mundah, al-Ṭaḥāwī, al-Ḥākim, al-Bayhaqī, al-Khaṭṭābī, al-Nawawī, al-Dhahabī, Ibn Ḥajar, al-Suyūṭī, Aḥmad Shākir, and others.

Glossary of the ḥadith
– qallatayn: the dual of qalla, with a ḍammah on the qāf. A qalla is a large earthenware jar; its plural is qilāl with a kasrah on the qāf. Two qullas equal five hundred Iraqi ratls, and one Iraqi ratl equals ninety mithqāls. In terms of the prophetic measure (ṣāʿ), that is roughly 93.75 ṣāʿs, which Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah deemed correct.