out of doubt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī also related the report from Mālik with the wording “from Abū Hurayrah alone,” making no mention of Abū Saʿīd.

I say: This lone-narrator version is given by al-Bukhārī (13/263) through ʿAmr ibn ʿAlī, who said, “ʿAbd al-Raḥmān narrated it to us.”¹

Aḥmad, however, differs and says: “from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān—[either] from Abū Hurayrah or Abū Saʿīd,” as cited earlier.

In short, the recension that runs Mālik → Khabīb is unsettled; the sound text is Khabīb → Ḥafṣ → Abū Hurayrah, exactly as ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar transmitted it.

A number of transmitters corroborated him: his brother ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar al-ʿUmari in Aḥmad (2/401); Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, likewise in Aḥmad (2/397, 528); and Shuʿbah, reported by al-Ṭabarānī in al-Ṣaghīr (p. 230).

Yet it seems the ḥadith does have an independent provenance through Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, which will be presented next.

There are further chains from Abū Hurayrah as well. One of them is: Ḥammād ibn Salamah → Suhayl ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ → his father → Abū Hurayrah, as a marfūʿ report.

This isnād is sound according to Muslim’s criterion, and Aḥmad recorded it (2/412, 534).