Third: he does not know which of the two wordings is authentic, for he became entangled in a lengthy study by Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Sindi—may Allah amend his state—concerning the report of Ibn ʿAbbās. In that study he kept harping on the weak wording, elaborating on its shortcomings and exaggerating its weakness, all the while repeating himself tediously and vacillating confusedly in his verdict—matters that there is no room to detail here. At the same time he suppressed the sound wording and never cited its chain; he merely hinted at it (p. 18) with the remark:
“Here are other chains whose degree of weakness and oddness is no less.”
Such were his words—may Allah guide him—yet in this he spoke falsely. His falsehood slipped past our good-hearted brother, who reproduced those words in his book (3/263–265) and endorsed them, being, like others, unfamiliar with this discipline. He even headed the section, “Authentication of the reports ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās (may Allah be pleased with them both),” and followed it with another entitled, “A reply to the statement of Ibn ʿAbbās, assuming it is traced to him” (3/267).
Therefore I find myself obliged to present the sound chain, first so that readers may be fully informed, second that they may distinguish the truthful from the mendacious and the learned from the ignorant, and third that they may not be duped by every loudmouth who prattles about what he does not know. Allah is the One whose help is sought.
Ibn Abī Shaybah (d. 235 AH) said in his Muṣannaf (4/283): “Ziyād b. Abī al-Rabīʿ narrated to us, from Ṣāliḥ al-Dahhān, from Jābir b. Zayd, from Ibn ʿAbbās:
(Sound) ‘and let them not display their adornment…’—he said: the hand and the patch of the face.”
⦗132⦘