I say: Al-Kharāʾiṭī also narrated it (p. 74) through Sayyār ibn Ḥātim: Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān al-Ḍubaʿī narrated to us, from Abū ʿImrān al-Jawnī, who said: A man said, “Messenger of Allah, I complain to you of the hardness of my heart.” He replied: “Draw the orphan close to you ...” mentioning the hadith, but without the words, “and treat him gently.”

Its chain is a good mursal chain. Its narrators are trustworthy and are among Muslim’s narrators, apart from Sayyār ibn Ḥātim, of whom al-Ḥāfiẓ said: “Truthful, but liable to errors.”

855 — “May Allah have mercy on a servant who spoke and thus gained, or remained silent and was safe.”

Al-Baghawī narrated it in Ḥadīth Kāmil ibn Ṭalḥah (3/2), and al-Quḍāʿī in Musnad al-Shihāb (47/2), through two chains from al-Ḥasan, attributed to the Prophet in mursal form.

Ibn al-Mubārak also narrated it in al-Zuhd (380): Ibn Lahīʿah informed us; Khālid ibn Abī ʿImrān narrated to me that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, held his tongue for a long while, then released it and said: “I fear this for you. May Allah have mercy on a servant who speaks good and gains thereby, or remains silent from evil and is safe.”

Its narrators are trustworthy, but it is mursal—indeed, it has a double break in its chain—for this Khālid narrated only from ʿUrwah and those of his generation. He died in 139 AH.

It has also been narrated with a connected chain. Al-Suyūṭī cited it in al-Jāmiʿ as a hadith of Abū Umāmah attributed to the Prophet. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī said in Takhrīj al-Iḥyāʾ (3/95): “Ibn Abī al-Dunyā narrated it in al-Ṣamt, and al-Bayhaqī in al-Shuʿab, as a hadith of Anas, through a chain containing weakness, for it is narrated by Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh from the people of the Ḥijāz.”