and Abū Nuʿaym in Akhbār Iṣbahān (2/214), and al-Daylamī (1/1/34), transmitted it through Khālid ibn Ilyās, from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from his father, from ʿĀʾishah, who reported that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said it.

Ibn ʿAdī said: “Khālid ibn Ilyās narrates this from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah.” That is, he alone narrated it, and he is very weak. Al-Bazzār also transmitted it through his route, as cited in al-Haythamī’s al-Majmaʿ, where he said (5/164): “He is abandoned.” Al-Ḥāfiẓ said in Mukhtaṣar al-Daylamī: “Weak.”

I say: However, he was not alone in narrating it, for Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh corroborated him, though he differed from him in its chain of transmission. He narrated: from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir, from Jābir, who said: “Abū Qatādah had a full head of hair, so the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said to him: ‘Honor it.’ He would therefore comb it every other day.”

Al-Bayhaqī transmitted it in al-Shuʿab (2/265/2), as did Ibn ʿAsākir in Tārīkh Dimashq (8/509/1), and likewise al-Ṭabarānī in al-Awsaṭ, as cited in al-Majmaʿ. He said: “It is narrated through Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh from the people of the Hijaz, and his narrations from them are weak; but the rest of its narrators are reliable.” Yet the hadith has many supporting reports indicating its soundness, and they have already been mentioned under hadith (500—“Whoever has hair should honor it”). Among the reports supporting it is that which al-Bayhaqī also transmitted through Aḥmad ibn Manṣūr, who said: ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us; Maʿmar narrated to us, from Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jurashī, from their shaykhs, that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said to Abū Qatādah: “If you grow (your) hair, honor it.”