“Authentic according to the criteria of the two Shaykhs.” Al-Dhahabi agreed, and the assessment is indeed as both of them stated. Al-Mundhiri, however, was not satisfied with this judgement in his al-Targhīb, where he remarked, “What he has said is open to objection.”

I reply: The reason may be that the report coming through al-Maqburī is subject to variant transmissions, as will be shown. Yet Ismāʿīl ibn Umayyah is a trustworthy, firmly grounded narrator, as declared in al-Taqrīb.

He is further supported by Muḥammad ibn ʿAjlān, who also narrates it from al-Maqburī on the authority of Abū Hurayrah. Al-Ḥākim recorded this route through Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd from Ibn ʿAjlān, and Ibn Khuzaymah likewise included the ḥadīth in his Ṣaḥīḥ, as al-Targhīb notes.

The aforementioned discrepancy appears in several forms. The first is the route just mentioned.

Second: Sufyān al-Thawrī transmits it from Muḥammad ibn ʿAjlān, from al-Maqburī, from Kaʿb ibn ʿUjrah, as a statement traced back to the Prophet; this version is recorded by al-Dārimī. He is followed in that by Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh in Ibn Mājah, Qarān ibn Tammām Abū Tammām, and Sharīk ibn ʿAbd Allāh in Aḥmad—all of them relating it through Ibn ʿAjlān.

Third: al-Layth reports it from Ibn ʿAjlān, from Saʿīd al-Maqburī, from a man of Banū Kaʿb, from Kaʿb; this version is recorded by al-Tirmidhī.