That is what he said; but the correct assessment is that of al-Dhahabi in al-ʿUluww (no. 5 in its abridgement): “Its narrators are trustworthy.” This is because Abu Ishaq al-Sabiʿi had suffered deterioration in his memory, and he also practised tadlīs.

Note: In this hadith, the preposition fi (“in”) has the sense of ala (“upon”), as in Allah’s saying: “Say, ‘Travel through the land...’” Thus, the hadith is one of the many proofs that Allah Most High is above all created things. Al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi wrote his book, The Exaltedness of Allah, the Most High, the Magnificent, on this subject. I recently completed an abridgement of it, for which I wrote a comprehensive introduction, traced its hadiths and reports to their sources, and purged it of weak reports. May Allah facilitate its publication.

926 — “The believer is the mirror of his fellow believer, and the believer is the brother of his fellow believer: he safeguards his property for him and protects him in his absence.”

Ibn Wahb transmitted it in al-Jamiʿ (p. 37), and from him Abu Dawud (2/304) and al-Bukhari in al-Adab al-Mufrad (no. 239), through the route of Kathir ibn Zayd, from al-Walid ibn Rabah, from Abu Hurayrah, from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, who said it.

I say: This chain of transmission is good, as al-Hafiz al-Iraqi stated in Takhrij al-Ihyaʾ (2/160), and al-Manawi concurred with him. He classified it as good rather than authentic only because of the disagreement concerning this Ibn Zayd. Al-Hafiz said in al-Taqrib: “Truthful, but makes mistakes.”