It is also transmitted from Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ.

Aḥmad recorded it, saying: “Ibn Abī ʿAdī narrated to us from Ibn Isḥāq.” Yaʿqūb said: “My father narrated to us from Ibn Isḥāq; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad narrated to me”—and Yaʿqūb added—“it was Ibn Abī ʿAtīq, from ʿĀmir ibn Saʿd, who related it from his father Saʿd.”

This chain is ḥasan: all its transmitters are trustworthy and are found in the two Ṣaḥīḥs except Ibn Isḥāq, and he is a reliable narrator. Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid states, “Aḥmad and Abū Yaʿlā recorded it, and its transmitters are declared trustworthy,” and al-Ḥāfiẓ said, “Aḥmad transmitted it with a ḥasan chain.”

These aḥādīth convey the same ruling as the previously cited report of Abū Hurayrah, namely the permissibility of spitting in the mosque—when there is a need—provided one buries the sputum. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī wrote in his commentary on al-Taqrīb: “Abūʾl-Walīd al-Bājī said: If a person spits in the mosque and covers his spit, there is no sin upon him.” Al-Qurṭubī likewise quoted Ibn Makkī as saying that it is only a sin for the one who spits in it without burying it. Al-Qurṭubī added, “This is confirmed by the wording found in the ḥadith of Abū Dharr: ‘Among the reprehensible deeds I saw was phlegm left in the mosque without being buried.’ Thus it was not deemed an evil merely by being discharged in the mosque, but by remaining there unburied.”

I say: Further evidence for this appears in his permission in the ḥadith at hand—meaning the earlier report of Abū Hurayrah—where he said, “or [spit] beneath his foot and then bury it,” if we interpret the ḥadith as intending