Aḥmad then recorded the tradition through the route of Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, from ʿAmr, with the wording:
“All the earth is a mosque—and a means of purification—except the graveyard and the bathhouse.”

Ibn Isḥāq has added the phrase “and a means of purification,” an additional clause that is anomalous and weak. Without it, the ḥadith is authentic according to the criteria of the Two Imāms, al-Bukhārī and Muslim, as al-Ḥākim stated and al-Dhahabī endorsed.

Al-Tirmidhī and al-Bayhaqī, however, deemed the report defective because al-Thawrī transmitted it from ʿAmr ibn Yaḥyā, from his father, directly from the Prophet ﷺ as a mursal report, omitting Abū Saʿīd. Ibn Mājah, al-Bayhaqī, and Aḥmad likewise recorded it in this mursal form through Yazīd ibn Hārūn from al-Thawrī. Such a critique is puzzling, given that four reliable transmitters unanimously reported it with a connected chain, and a connected version—being an additional detail—ought to be accepted. Indeed, al-Thawrī himself relates it with a fully connected isnād in some transmissions.

Al-Dāraquṭnī states in al-ʿIlal, as cited in al-Talkhīṣ: “Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Muʾadhdhin—trustworthy—narrated to us: al-Sarī ibn Yaḥyā narrated to us: Abū Nuʿaym and Qabīṣah narrated to us: Sufyān (al-Thawrī) from ʿAmr ibn Yaḥyā, from his father, from Abū Saʿīd—with a connected chain.” He then remarked, “The preserved version is the mursal one.”

Even if that judgment were sound with respect to al-Thawrī’s particular recension, it does not apply to the transmissions of the other narrators. For that reason the author of al-Imām said: “All that has been adduced as a defect reduces to the fact that one recension is mursal; but when a trustworthy transmitter supplies a connected chain, it is to be accepted.”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ (Ibn Ḥajar) adds: “Ibn Dihyah went to an unwarranted extreme, saying in his book al-Tanwīr: ‘This ḥadith is not sound through any route.’”