Ibn Maʿīn said: “He is not trustworthy,” while al-Saʿdī and Abū Ḥātim said: “He is a liar.”

928 — “Whoever abandons his brother for a year is like one who sheds his blood.”

It was reported by al-Bukhārī in al-Adab al-Mufrad (404, 405), Abū Dāwūd (2/303—Tāziyyah), al-Ḥākim (4/163), Aḥmad (4/320), and Ibn Saʿd in al-Ṭabaqāt (7/500), through Abū ʿUthmān al-Walīd ibn Abī al-Walīd, from ʿImrān ibn Abī Anas, from Abū Khirāsh al-Sulamī, who heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say this. Al-Ḥākim said: “Its chain of transmission is authentic.” Al-Dhahabī agreed with him.

I say: Al-ʿIrāqī likewise said so in his Takhrīj al-Iḥyāʾ (2/199), as did the eminent scholar Ibn al-Murtaḍā al-Yamanī in Īthār al-Ḥaqq ʿalā al-Khalq (425). It now appears to me that this is indeed so, for all its narrators—apart from the Companion—are narrators of Muslim. I had previously said in my notes on al-Mishkāt (5036): “Its chain is weak.” This was based on al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar’s statement in his entry on this al-Walīd in al-Taqrīb that he was weak in hadith. He derived this from what he mentioned in his biographical notice in al-Tahdhīb, where there is no attestation of his reliability other than Ibn Ḥibbān’s statement in al-Thiqāt: “Despite the paucity of his narrations, he would sometimes differ [from others].”

I say: He overlooked Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s statement in al-Jarḥ wa al-Taʿdīl (4/2/20): “Abū Zurʿah was asked about him and said: ‘Trustworthy.’”