565 — “Carefully count Shaʿbān’s crescent for Ramadan, and do not confuse it with Ramadan unless it coincides with a fast that one of you customarily observes. Fast upon sighting it, and end the fast upon sighting it. If it is obscured from you, its number is not obscured from you.”

Al-Dāraquṭnī recorded it (p. 230), as did al-Ḥākim (1/425), and al-Bayhaqī from both of them (4/206), and al-Baghawī in Sharḥ al-Sunnah (2/182/1–2), through Abū Muʿāwiyah, from Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr, from Abū Salamah, from Abū Hurayrah, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said—and he cited it.

Al-Ḥākim said: “Authentic according to Muslim’s criteria.” Al-Dhahabī agreed with him.

I say: It is only good, due to the disagreement concerning Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr, and because Muslim did not cite him as evidence, but only transmitted from him in corroboration. Moreover, al-Dāraquṭnī alone relates the hadith in this complete form. Al-Baghawī does not include the words, “Fast upon sighting it...” and so forth, while al-Ḥākim records only its first passage.

Al-Tirmidhī likewise recorded it (1/133) and considered it defective, saying: “We know it in this form only through the hadith of Abū Muʿāwiyah. The sound version is that which has been narrated from Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr, from Abū Salamah, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, who said: ‘Do not precede the month of Ramadan by one or two days.’

“It was likewise narrated from Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr, from Abū Salamah, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, with wording similar to the hadith of Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr al-Laythī.”

I say: Since al-Tirmidhī had encountered only the first portion of the hadith, as we have noted, he concluded that Abū Muʿāwiyah had erred by saying, “Carefully count Shaʿbān’s crescent for Ramadan,” in place of, “Do not precede...” and so forth. He therefore judged it to be an error. I do not see it that way, because al-Dāraquṭnī’s narration combines both.