(1) It is reported by Ahmad (5/184, 186). All the transmitters are thiqat (reliable) except for ʿUqbah b. ʿAbd al-Rahman—also known as Ibn Abi Maʿmar—who is majhul (unknown), as stated in al-Taqrib. Do not be taken in by al-Haythami’s comment (2/27): “It was transmitted by al-Tabarani in al-Kabir and its transmitters are muwaththaqun,” nor by al-Shawkani who, following him, wrote (2/114): “Its chain is good.” The term muwaththaqun ranks below thiqat: when the critics say muwaththaqun they imply that one of the narrators has only weak or solitary endorsement. Al-Haythami was in fact hinting that this ʿUqbah was declared reliable solely by Ibn Hibban, and Ibn Hibban’s endorsements are themselves not dependable—Allah knows best. That Ibn Hibban’s gradings are unreliable is something specialists in this noble science readily concede. I have discussed the matter in detail in my reply to Shaykh ʿAbd Allah al-Habashi’s tract al-Taʿaqub al-Hathith, first serialized in the journal al-Tamaddun al-Islami and later published separately under the title al-Radd ʿala al-Taʿaqub al-Hathith; see pp. 18–21. Moreover, a critic’s statement that “the transmitters are thiqat” or that “its transmitters are the transmitters of the Sahih” does not by itself mean that the isnad (chain of transmission) is sound, as I have clarified elsewhere; see, for example, Sahih al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib, vol. 1, p. 70 (Maktabat al-Maʿarif edition). Nevertheless, the hadith in question is authentic by virtue of the corroborating chains already cited.