“Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Awsaṭ through two chains, containing Yazīd al-Raqāshī and Jābir al-Juʿfī; both are weak, although both were declared reliable.”

I say: The aforementioned declarations of reliability carry no weight, particularly in the case of al-Juʿfī, for some scholars accused him. However, he does not appear in al-Ṭabarānī’s other chain, where Khalīl ibn Murrah corroborates him and is superior to him, as established above. When this chain is combined with the chain of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Zayd, the hadith gains strength through them. Allah, Most High, knows best.

626 — “The invitations of two people who compete in ostentation are not to be accepted, nor is their food to be eaten.”

This is how al-Khaṭīb al-Tabrīzī cited it in al-Mishkāt (3226), and then al-Suyūṭī in al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr, on the authority of al-Bayhaqī in Shuʿab al-Īmān, from Abū Hurayrah, attributed to the Prophet.

Al-Manāwī said: “Ibn Lāl and al-Daylamī also narrated it from him.”

This is what he said, without making any comment at all on its chain of transmission. Yet I located it: Ibn al-Sammāk said in a section of his Hadith collection (fol. 64/1): Saʿīd ibn ʿUthmān al-Ahwāzī narrated to us; Muʿādh ibn Asad informed us; ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ḍarīr informed us, from Abū Ḥamzah al-Sukkarī, from al-Aʿmash, from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Abū Hurayrah, with this wording, except that he said: “the two who show off.” Above it is the letter ṣād, indicating that this is indeed how it stands in the original. The manuscript is of good quality, for it is in the handwriting of al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir, the historian of Damascus, and bears his record of having heard it.

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission. Its narrators are trustworthy transmitters used by al-Bukhārī, except for Saʿīd ibn ʿUthmān al-Ahwāzī, whom al-Khaṭīb profiled and said (9/97):