As for Ibn ʿAdī, he regarded them as one person, for he did not give this al-Muzanī a separate biographical entry; rather, he cited, under the entry for Ibn Abī al-Ṣahbāʾ, his hadith recorded by al-Nasāʾī. This is highly plausible, since they shared three characteristics: each was from Basra, bore the kunya Abū al-Mundhir, and narrated from Thābit. Such a concurrence is ordinarily unlikely in two distinct narrators. And Allah knows best.

659 — “It brings greater blessing”—that is, food whose heat and steam have subsided.

It was narrated by al-Dārimī (2 / 100), Ibn Ḥibbān in his Ṣaḥīḥ (1344), al-Ḥākim (4 / 118), and al-Bayhaqī (7 / 280), through Qurrah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from Ibn Shihāb, from ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr, from Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr: “Whenever she prepared a dish of crumbled bread soaked in broth, she would cover it for a while until its heat and steam had subsided. Then she would say: ‘I heard the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, say...’” and then cited it.

Al-Ḥākim said: “Authentic according to Muslim’s criterion in corroborative narrations.” Al-Dhahabī concurred with him, and it is as they said. ʿUqayl ibn Khālid also corroborated him, from Ibn Shihāb, with the same report. It was narrated by Aḥmad (6 / 350) and Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilyah (8 / 177), through the route of ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Mubārak: Ibn Lahīʿah narrated to us; ʿUqayl narrated to me, with the same report. Abū Nuʿaym said: “This is a singular narration from Ibn al-Mubārak through Ibn Lahīʿah.”

I say: Its chain of transmission is authentic, and its narrators are trustworthy. Ibn Lahīʿah’s hadith is authentic when it is narrated from him by the al-ʿAbādilah, among whom was this Ibn al-Mubārak. Al-Haythamī said (5 / 19): “Aḥmad narrated it through two chains of transmission: one of them is interrupted, while the other includes Ibn Lahīʿah, whose hadith is good, though he has some weakness. Al-Ṭabarānī also narrated it, and its chain includes Qurrah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, whom Ibn Ḥibbān and others deemed trustworthy, while Ibn Maʿīn and others declared him weak. The remaining narrators in both chains are narrators of the Ṣaḥīḥ collections.”