Ibn ʿAdī included it in the biography of this ʿAbd al-Malik along with another hadith of his, and said: “These two hadiths are rejected with this chain of transmission; no one besides ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Zayd narrated them.”

I say: Ibn Ḥibbān declared him trustworthy, al-Nasāʾī said, “There is no harm in him,” and Ibn al-Junayd said, “He is weak in hadith.” Thus, a narrator of this sort has hadiths of the good grade, which is what the aforementioned statement of al-Nasāʾī indicates and what al-Ḥāfiẓ adopted in al-Taqrīb. Such a narrator’s hadith may be used as evidence at the level of good, unless his error is shown—and this is not the case with this hadith. Perhaps it was for this reason that al-Ṭaḥāwī considered this hadith strong.

Indeed, there is further evidence supporting the fact that he preserved it, both in chain and text: Abū Bakr ibn Nāfiʿ al-ʿUmarī corroborated him, reporting from Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr ibn Ḥazm, from ʿAmrah, with the same report. It was recorded by al-Bukhārī in al-Adab al-Mufrad (465), al-Ṭaḥāwī, Ibn Ḥibbān in his Ṣaḥīḥ (1520), Abū Yaʿlā in his Musnad (237/2), Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī in al-Fawāʾid (73/255/1), Ibn al-Muẓaffar in al-Fawāʾid, and al-Bayhaqī—all through routes from al-ʿUmarī with the same report. None of them mentioned “from his father” in its chain of transmission, except Ibn al-Muẓaffar in one of his two versions.

However, this Abū Bakr—who was a client of Zayd ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, as is explicitly stated in al-Shāfiʿī’s Fawāʾid and in one narration of al-Ṭaḥāwī—Ibn Maʿīn said of him: “He is of no account.”