So he performed the full bath and died. When that was reported to the Prophet ﷺ he said, “What is the matter with them? They killed him—may Allah kill them!”—he repeated this three times—“Allah has made the soil, that is, tayammum, a purifier.” Al-Ḥākim recorded it (1/165) as did Ibn Khuzaymah and Ibn Ḥibbān; the first of them declared it sound, and al-Dhahabī concurred. This is astonishing, for in his Mīzān al-Dhahabī himself notes that al-Walīd was deemed weak by al-Dāraquṭnī.

Yet al-Walīd’s narration is corroborated. The report is also found in Abū Dāwūd (1/56), Ibn Mājah (202), al-Dāramī (192), and again in al-Ḥākim (1/178) through the route of al-Awzāʿī, who related that it had reached him from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ with a similar wording. That version states that the man had sustained wounds, and ends with the rebuke: “Was not the cure for ignorance simply to ask?”

Al-Ḥākim gives another chain: from Bishr ibn Bakr—“al-Awzāʿī told us, ʿAṭāʾ told us.” Were this firmly established it would be sound, but its defect is that al-Awzāʿī did not hear it directly from ʿAṭāʾ; rather he received it from Ismāʿīl ibn Muslim, from ʿAṭāʾ.

I say: Ismāʿīl is weak, yet the corroboration of al-Walīd strengthens the report, and it is further supported by al-Zubayr ibn Khariq, who diverges in the chain and relates it “from ʿAṭāʾ, from Jābir” with a fuller wording. This route is in Abū Dāwūd (56) and al-Dāraquṭnī (69). Al-Dāraquṭnī remarked, “No one narrated it from ʿAṭāʾ, from Jābir, except al-Zubayr ibn Khariq, and he is not strong,” while Ibn al-Sakan graded it sound, as cited in Nayl al-Awṭār ⦗224⦘.

In sum, owing to these corroborating chains the hadith is strong and well-established.