Al-Shawkānī stated: The report of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥanẓalah was transmitted by al-Ṭabarānī. Al-Haythamī says in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid that the transmitters cited by Aḥmad are the same narrators found in the two Ṣaḥīḥs. It is corroborated by the report of al-Barāʾ, by the report of Abū Hurayrah recorded by al-Bayhaqī (12447), and by the report of Ibn Masʿūd recorded by al-Ḥākim (2259), who declared it authentic.

Those who criticized this ḥadith include al-Bayhaqī, who said: “Its chain is sound, but its text is objectionable, and I do not know it with this isnād except as an error.”

Shaykh al-Muʿallimī remarked: “It contains Muḥammad ibn Ghālib al-Tamātamī, a narrator prone to mistakes. It appears that the ḥadith is not authentically established at all from the Prophet ﷺ. The report has supporting narrations from several Companions, yet each of them contains some weakness, though certain scholars—such as al-Mundhirī and al-Shawkānī—have relied on them.”

Vocabulary of the two ḥadiths
– ākil al-ribā (the one who consumes usury): i.e. the person who profits from it. Eating is singled out from other kinds of benefit because it is the most common purpose.
– muʾkiluhu (its payer): the borrower.
– ribā (usury): linguistically “increase” or “excess,” from raba yarbū (to grow). In the texts it refers to an unlawful increase in specified dealings.
– aysaruhā (the least of them): from yasura / yasura, meaning to be easy or slight; the sense here is “the lightest” or “least sinful.”
– arbā al-ribā (the gravest form of usury): the most serious and severe, namely that a person intensifies his verbal abuse of a Muslim’s honor beyond what the first offender uttered.

Points derived from the two ḥadiths
1 – Both narrations establish the prohibition of ribā and that its consumer, its scribe, and its witness are cursed—that is, banished and expelled from the mercy of Allah, Exalted is He.
2 – They also show that the avenues and varieties of ribā are many, and among the most heinous of its avenues was that which