“Authentic according to the conditions of Muslim.” Al-Dhahabī concurred with him, and it is as they both said.
Aḥmad also recorded it (2/89, 106) through other routes from Mūsā, with the same wording but without the stated exception. He also has a second route (2/110): Sulaymān narrated to us; Ismāʿīl informed us; Ibn Dīnār told me, from Ibn ʿUmar:
“The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, dispatched an expedition and appointed Usāmah ibn Zayd as its commander. Some people then disparaged his command, so the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, stood and said: ‘If you disparage his command, you had previously disparaged his father’s command. By Allah, he was indeed worthy of command, and he was among the people most beloved to me; and this one is among the people most beloved to me after him.’”
This is an authentic chain of transmission. Sulaymān is Sulaymān ibn Dāwūd al-Hāshimī, a distinguished, trustworthy jurist; Ismāʿīl is Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar al-Anṣārī al-Qārī, trustworthy and precise. Ibn Dīnār—ʿAbd Allāh—is likewise. It was also recorded by al-Bukhārī and Muslim.
- “The Greatest Name of Allah occurs in three surahs of the Quran: al-Baqarah, Āl ʿImrān, and Ṭā Hā.”
It was recorded by Ibn Maʿīn in al-Tārīkh wa al-ʿIlal (10/152/2); Ibn Mājah (3856); al-Ṭaḥāwī in Mushkil al-Āthār (1/63); al-Firyābī in Faḍāʾil al-Quran (184/1); Tammām in al-Fawāʾid (36/2); Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Marwān al-Qurashī in al-Fawāʾid (25/110/2)—whose wording is cited here—and al-Ḥākim (1/506), through ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, who said: I heard al-Qāsim Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān narrating from Abū Umāmah, attributing it to the Prophet.
Al-Qāsim Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān said: “So I searched for it in al-Baqarah and found it in the Verse of the Throne: ‘Allah—there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of all existence’; and in Āl ʿImrān, at its beginning: ‘Allah—there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of all existence’; and in Ṭā Hā: ‘And all faces will be humbled before the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of all existence.’”