This is a mursal report with an authentic chain of transmission, were it not for the fact that Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz became confused in his narrations before his death. However, I found a good, abbreviated corroborating report for this hadith, worded: “Indeed, the believer is like a nose-pierced camel: wherever it is tethered, it complies.” Thus, the hadith is good on account of it. It occurs at the end of the hadith that follows.

The first part of it has corroborating reports that will be mentioned after the hadith indicated.

937 — “I have left you upon the clear way, whose night is like its day. None deviates from it after me except one who is doomed to perish. Whoever among you lives will see much disagreement; so hold fast to what you have known of my sunnah and the sunnah of the rightly guided caliphs. Bite firmly upon it with your molar teeth, and adhere to obedience, even if [the ruler is] an Abyssinian slave. Indeed, the believer is like a nose-pierced camel: wherever it is tethered, it complies.”

Ibn Mājah (43), al-Ḥākim (1/96), and Aḥmad (4/126) narrated it through the route of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAmr al-Sulamī, who said that he heard al-ʿIrbāḍ ibn Sāriyah say: “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, delivered to us an exhortation from which eyes shed tears and hearts trembled. So we said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, this is surely the exhortation of one bidding farewell; so what do you enjoin upon us?’ He said ...” and then cited it.

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission; all its narrators are known and trustworthy, apart from this ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAmr. Ibn Ḥibbān mentioned him in al-Thiqāt, and a number of trustworthy narrators transmitted from him. Al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Ḥibbān, and al-Ḥākim authenticated his hadith, as stated in al-Tahdhīb. Ibn Ḥibbān (102) also narrated this hadith through another route from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAmr, together with Ḥujr ibn Ḥujr al-Kalāʿī, from al-ʿIrbāḍ, through him, but without the words: “Indeed, the believer ...”

Likewise, al-Mukhalliṣ narrated it through the first route in Seven Sessions (fol. 51/1), and Ibn ʿAsākir narrated it from him in The History of Damascus (11/265/2), as did al-Lālakāʾī in The Explanation of the Sunnah (228/1—Kawākib 576), and al-Ḍiyāʾ al-Maqdisī in The Selected Hadiths (10/104/2), as did