explicitly stated that he heard it, there is no concern about him. Thus, in my view, the hadith is authentic when all its chains are considered together. And Allah knows best.

959 — “My community is a community granted mercy. It will face no punishment in the Hereafter; its punishment is in this world: tribulations, earthquakes, and killing.”

It was narrated by Abū Dāwūd (4278), al-Ḥākim (4/444), and Aḥmad (4/410 and 418), through al-Masʿūdī, from Saʿīd ibn Abī Burdah, from his father, from Abū Mūsā, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said it. Al-Ḥākim said: “Its chain of transmission is authentic!” Al-Dhahabī agreed with him.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar said in Bazl al-Māʿūn (54/2): “Its chain is good.” That is what they said, although al-Masʿūdī had become confused in his later years. Yet the hadith is authentic, for Aḥmad (4/408), al-Bukhārī in The Great History (1/1/38–39), al-Ṭabarānī in The Small Lexicon (p. 3), al-Qāḍī al-Khawlānī in The History of Dārayyā (pp. 82–83), Abū Bakr al-Kalābādhī in The Key to Meanings (154/1), and al-Wāḥidī in The Intermediate Commentary (1/128/1) all narrated it through numerous other routes from Abū Burdah, with the same report.

Abū Burdah also has another chain for it. Muḥammad ibn Fuḍayl ibn Ghazwān said: Ṣadafah ibn al-Muthannā narrated to us; Riyāḥ narrated to us, from Abū Burdah, who said: “While I was standing in the marketplace during Ziyād’s governorship, I struck one hand against the other in astonishment. A man from the Anṣār—whose father had been a Companion of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him—said, ‘What astonishes you, Abū Burdah?’ I replied, ‘I am astonished at people whose religion is one, whose Prophet is one, whose call is one, and whose pilgrimage…’