Al-Ṣūfī narrated to us; Zayd ibn Ḥubāb narrated to us; Sufyān al-Thawrī, from Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad, from his father, from Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh.
He said:
“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ performed three pilgrimages: two before the Hijrah and one in which he combined an ʿUmrah with the Hajj.”
This ḥadīth was also recorded by al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah on the authority of Sufyān ibn Saʿīd al-Thawrī.
As for al-Tirmidhī, he transmitted it through ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Ziyād, from Zayd ibn Ḥubāb, from Sufyān, and then remarked: “It is gharib from the narration of Sufyān; we know it only through Zayd ibn Ḥubāb. I have found ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān—meaning al-Dārimī—citing this ḥadīth in his writings from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Ziyād. I asked Muḥammad [i.e., al-Bukhārī] about it, but he did not recognize it, and I observed that he did not regard it as firmly preserved.
“What is actually related from al-Thawrī runs through Abū Isḥāq, from Mujāhid, in mursal form.”
In his al-Sunan al-Kabīr, al-Bayhaqī quotes Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī as saying: “I asked Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī about this report, and he replied: ‘This ḥadīth is mistaken; what is narrated from al-Thawrī is only the mursal version.’”
Al-Bukhārī added, “Whenever Zayd ibn Ḥubāb narrated from memory he would sometimes make mistakes.”
Ibn Mājah, for his part, transmitted the report through al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbbād al-Muhallabī, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Dāwūd al-Khuraybī, from Sufyān. This chain was unknown to al-Tirmidhī and al-Bayhaqī—and perhaps even to al-Bukhārī, who criticized Zayd ibn Ḥubāb under the impression that he alone had transmitted it. Such, however, is not the case. Allah knows best.
[Another isnād from Jābir]
Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī said: “Ibn Abī ʿUmar narrated to us; Abū Muʿāwiyah narrated to us, from Ḥajjāj, from Abū al-Zubayr…”