“What prevented you from praying with the people? Are you not a Muslim?” He replied, “Indeed I am, O Messenger of Allah, but I had already prayed with my family.” The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, then said to him: “...”

Al-Hakim said: “This is an authentic hadith, and Malik ibn Anas is the authority regarding the hadiths of the people of Madinah; he relied on it in al-Muwatta’.” He and Ahmad (4/34/338) then narrated it through other routes from Zayd ibn Aslam, with the same report.

I say: No one narrated from Busr ibn Mihjan besides Zayd ibn Aslam, and no one declared him trustworthy besides Ibn Hibban. Nevertheless, al-Hafiz described him as “truthful.” Perhaps the basis for this was al-Hakim’s statement cited above. Allah knows best.

In any case, the hadith is authentic, for it has a corroborating report from the hadith of Yazid ibn al-Aswad in the Sunan and elsewhere, as I have documented in Sahih Abi Dawud (590). Al-Suyuti attributed the hadith only to Sa‘id ibn Mansur in his Sunan, with the wording: “When you enter a mosque, pray with the people, even if you have already prayed.”

1338 — “O Allah, whoever believes in You and testifies that I am Your Messenger, make meeting You beloved to him, make Your decree easy for him, and lessen his share of this world. As for whoever does not believe in You or testify that I am Your Messenger, do not make meeting You beloved to him, do not make Your decree easy for him, and grant him an abundance of this world.”

Ibn Hibban (2475) and al-Tabarani in al-Mu‘jam al-Kabir (folio 74/2 of a selection from it) narrated it through the route of ‘Abd Allah ibn Wahb, who said: Sa‘id ibn Abi Ayyub related to me, from Abu Hani’, from Abu ‘Ali al-Janbi, from Fudalah ibn ‘Ubayd, that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “...”

I say: This is a sound chain of transmission. Its narrators are trustworthy and are narrators used by Muslim, apart from Abu ‘Ali al-Janbi, whose name was ‘Amr ibn Malik. He is trustworthy, as stated in al-Taqrib, and he is not ‘Amr ibn Malik al-Nakari, concerning whom criticism has been made. Abu Hani’s name was Humayd ibn Hani’ al-Khawlani al-Misri. The hadith has two corroborating reports. (See Addendum no. 325/19.) (See Addendum no. 325/23.)