Muslim (8/160), Ibn Mājah (2/545), and Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilyah (2/17) recorded it through the route of Maṭar al-Warrāq, who said: Qatādah narrated to me from Muṭarrif ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Shikhkhīr, from ʿIyāḍ ibn Ḥimār, that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, addressed them in a sermon and said this.

I say: The narrators in this chain are trustworthy, but it has two defects: Qatādah’s ambiguous transmission formula, and Maṭar al-Warrāq’s poor retention. Qatādah did not hear this hadith from Muṭarrif, as I have established in my notes on my book Mukhtaṣar Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, which is nearly complete; see hadith no. 3906 therein. Because of these two defects, I was prompted to trace the various routes of the hadith, in the hope that I might find something to strengthen it. I found it in Sunan Abī Dāwūd (2/300), through the route of al-Ḥajjāj, from Qatādah, from Yazīd ibn ʿAbd Allāh, from ʿIyāḍ, with the same wording.

I say: This chain too is weak, because al-Ḥajjāj—namely Ibn Arṭāh—also practised tadlīs. Moreover, it is interrupted between Yazīd ibn ʿAbd Allāh and ʿIyāḍ, with his brother Muṭarrif ibn ʿAbd Allāh omitted between them, as Aḥmad narrated, through an authentic chain, from Qatādah with this chain. He mentioned the sermon, but it does not contain this hadith except through the earlier route of Maṭar al-Warrāq; it is mentioned in the note referred to above.

I found a supporting narration for the hadith, recorded by al-Bukhārī in al-Adab al-Mufrad (426) and Ibn Mājah (4214), through the route of Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb, from Sinān ibn Saʿd, from Anas, from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, who said: “Allah, Exalted is He, revealed to me that you should be humble and that none of you should transgress against another.”

I say: Its chain is better than the chain of ʿIyāḍ’s hadith. Its narrators are trustworthy and are narrators relied upon by the two Shaykhs, except