Zayd ibn Aslam, from Ata ibn Yasar, from Ubadah ibn al-Samit, that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said it. Al-Hakim said: “Its chain of transmission is authentic,” and al-Dhahabi concurred with him.

Al-Tirmidhi considered it defective because of the discrepancy, for he, Ibn Majah (2/590), and Ahmad (5/240–241) transmitted it through two routes from Zayd ibn Aslam, from Ata ibn Yasar, from Muadh ibn Jabal, that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said it. They cited it in a fuller form, and he said: “Hisham ibn Sa‘d likewise narrated this hadith from Zayd ibn Aslam, from Ata ibn Yasar, from Muadh ibn Jabal. In my view, this is more authentic than Hammam’s hadith from Zayd ibn Aslam, from Ata ibn Yasar, from Ubadah ibn al-Samit. Ata did not meet Muadh ibn Jabal, who died early, during the caliphate of Umar.”

I say: Hammam ibn Yahya was trustworthy, and his reports were relied upon by both Sahihs. Thus, Ata may have had two chains for this hadith: one from Ubadah, which Hammam preserved, and the other from Muadh, which the group preserved. There is therefore no contradiction. Supporting this is the fact that al-Bukhari transmitted it, as mentioned above, through Hilal ibn Ali, from Ata ibn Yasar, from Abu Hurayrah, in a report attributed to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. This is thus a third chain for Ata. Reconciling the reports is preferable to declaring two trustworthy narrators mistaken. Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar alluded to this reconciliation, as appears in al-Mubarakfuri’s citation from him. And Allah knows best.

Note: The wording “one hundred years” is Ahmad’s narration. In the version of the other narrators, it is: “like the distance between heaven and earth.” This is Affan’s narration in Ahmad, and the same applies to their narrations from Muadh, except for Ahmad, whose version has the first wording: “one hundred years.” It is corroborated by the hadith of Sharik ibn Abdullah, from Muhammad ibn Jahadah, from Ata, from Abu Hurayrah, attributed to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in an abridged form: “Paradise has one hundred degrees; between every two degrees is one hundred years.”