That is how he declared it “false”! Yet this is not free of exaggeration, for there is no consensus that Bakr was weak, let alone that he was abandoned. Indeed, al-ʿIjlī said of him: “He is unobjectionable.” Ibn Ḥibbān likewise included him in al-Thiqāt—despite the majority deeming him weak. The correct view is that his hadith is weak when there is nothing to corroborate and strengthen it; but that is not the case here, in light of the supporting narrations that will follow. Perhaps for this reason al-Tirmidhī said after it: “A good, singular hadith; we know it only through this route.”
- As for the hadith of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mundhir al-Ḥizāmī narrated it to us: Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAlāʾ al-Thaqafī narrated to us; my maternal uncle, al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, narrated to me from his father, from his grandfather, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said—and he mentioned it.
Al-Ḥākim reported it (4/410) and said: “Its chain of transmission is authentic; all its narrators are Medinan. We also have, regarding it, the hadith of Mālik from Nāfiʿ, which Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Walīd al-Yashkurī alone narrated from him.”
I say: This is what he said! Al-Dhahabī agreed with him, which is surprising on the part of them both, for I have found no biographical notices for the narrators between ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf and al-Ḥizāmī. As for his statement, “al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf,” it seems that he was attributed to his grandfather, and I have not ascertained the name of al-Walīd’s father. Al-Ḥāfiẓ mentioned in the biography of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf that his sons who narrated from him were Ibrāhīm, Ḥumayd, ʿUmar, Muṣʿab, and Abū Salamah.
I checked the biography of al-Walīd as attributed to each of these five in Narrator Criticism and Accreditation and elsewhere, but could not find him. And Allah knows best.