I say: This isnād is sound; only an ignoramus or someone driven by bias would weaken it, for its narrators are all trustworthy. I begin with Ibn Abī Shaybah’s shaykh, Ziyad b. al-Rabīʿ, who is reliable without any known dissent, and al-Bukhārī cited him as proof in his Ṣaḥīḥ. Ṣāliḥ al-Dahhān is likewise trustworthy, as Ibn Maʿīn declared. Aḥmad said in al-ʿIlal (2/33), “There is nothing wrong with him,” and Ibn Ḥibbān listed him in al-Thiqāt (6/457).

As for Jābir b. Zayd—Abū al-Shaʿthāʾ al-Azdī—he is too famous to need introduction. He is among the reliable Successors well known for studying under Ibn ʿAbbās; both al-Bukhārī and Muslim narrated from him. Ibn ʿAbbās himself testified—as noted earlier (p. 50)—that Jābir was one of the scholars of the Book of Allah. From him we received Ibn ʿAbbās’s interpretation of “bringing down” (idnāʾ) in the verse: “She draws the jilbab over her face without binding it,” also cited earlier (p. 50). He is the one who instructed Hind bt. al-Muhallab to place the khimār on the forehead, i.e., not over the face, contrary to what al-Tuwijrī and his imitators assert.

Saʿīd b. Jubayr corroborated Ibn ʿAbbās in a report recorded by Ibn Abī Shaybah, though its chain is weak. ʿAbd Allah b. ʿUmar likewise supported Ibn ʿAbbās with a sound chain, and we have already quoted the identical wording.

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