“No one corroborates him in his hadith, and he may narrate rejected reports from trustworthy narrators.” ʿAtīq ibn Yaʿqūb has slight weakness, as was explained in al-Lisān; thus, the hidden defect lies with someone above him—either ʿAbd Allāh or ʿUqbah. Al-Ṭabarānī also recorded it through this route in al-Awsaṭ, as did al-Bazzār, as cited in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid (5/96). He said: “And he is weak.”

I say: I have not found it in the Book of Medicine in Zawāʾid al-Bazzār. And Allah knows best.

However, on p. 166, it contains, through the route of al-Waḍḍāḥ ibn Yaḥyā: Abū al-Aḥwaṣ narrated to us, from ʿĀṣim, from Anas, as a Prophetic report, with the wording: “He would apply kohl an odd number of times.” Al-Haythamī said: “Al-Waḍḍāḥ ibn Yaḥyā is weak.”

I say: Its wording is general. It may mean that he applied kohl an odd number of times to one eye but not the other—that is, the total for both eyes together would be odd—and this is the more apparent meaning. It may also mean an odd number of times for each eye, namely three times in each eye. This has been explicitly narrated in the hadith of Ibn ʿAbbās, through the route of ʿAbbād ibn Manṣūr, from ʿIkrimah, from him. Yet it is a chain of transmission that cannot serve as proof, because ʿAbbād ibn Manṣūr suffered deterioration in his later years, besides practising tadlīs, as I explained when documenting this hadith in Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl, no. 75: he omitted two men between himself and ʿIkrimah. One of them was Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Yaḥyā al-Aslamī, a liar, and the other was weak.

There, I also indicated that the distinguished Shaykh Aḥmad Shākir had erred in grading the chain of transmission of this