—a separate entry in Aḥmad’s Musnad. Allah knows best. As for the description “al-Madani,” it is a textual slip; the correct reading is al-Muzanī (with the mīm carrying a ḍamma and followed by a dotted zāʾ).

Thus the ḥāfiẓ declared al-Ḥusaynī mistaken, alleging that the person in question is al-Qāsim ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Muzanī, not al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Madani.

The most likely cause of this discrepancy is the variation among the manuscripts of the Musnad regarding the narrator’s name. Supporting this is the fact that our printed copy matches al-Ḥusaynī’s wording exactly. We cannot determine which version is correct, for the matter demands a careful collation of many reliable manuscripts of the Musnad—and how could we undertake that? Perhaps the eminent scholar Shaykh Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir has clarified the issue in his new edition of the Musnad.

Even so, the balance of evidence still favors the reading al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, for that is how the name appears in al-Dāraquṭnī’s transmission. Although the nisbah differs, as already noted, that does not preclude giving precedence to the element upon which the two reports agree.

There is another inconsistency between the ḥāfiẓ’s wording and what stands in our copy of the Musnad. He stated, as cited earlier: “from Ḥakīm concerning scented paste in the mosques.” Yet Ḥakīm has no hadith with such a meaning in the Musnad. He does transmit numerous reports in two places, but it is far more likely that our copy of al-Taʿjīl contains a corruption and that the original wording was: “concerning the ḥudūd being enforced in the mosques.” Allah knows best.