Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn informed us; Abū Ḥāmid Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Azharī informed us; Abū Muḥammad al-Mukhalladī informed us; Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj informed us; Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Karamah al-ʿIjlī informed us; Abū Usāmah said: Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr narrated to me; Abū Salamah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān informed us from Abū Hurayrah, tracing it back to the Prophet.

I say: This is a good chain of transmission; all its narrators are trustworthy and well known. Abū al-Maʿālī was first al-Fārisī and then al-Naysābūrī, the transmitter of al-Bayhaqī’s al-Sunan al-Kubrā and a transmitter of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī through al-ʿAyyār, as stated in Shadharāt al-Dhahab (4/124–125). Abū Ḥāmid al-Azharī was the trustworthy legal notary of Naysābūr, as also stated in al-Shadharāt (3/311). Abū Muḥammad al-Mukhalladī was al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan, from the people of Naysābūr. Al-Samʿānī said in al-Ansāb (514/2): “Al-Ḥākim narrated from him and declared him trustworthy, as did a group besides him. He died in 339 AH.”

I say: The author of Shadharāt overlooked him and therefore did not mention him among those who died in that year.

Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj was the trustworthy ḥadīth master, the author of the well-known Musnad. The rest of the narrators in the chain are well known from the biographical entries in al-Tahdhīb.

Al-Suyūṭī included this hadith in al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr on the authority of Abū Hurayrah, omitting its second half, as narrated by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā in Qirā al-Ḍayf. Al-Manāwī left it ungraded and made no comment on it.