“He narrated from Anas; he also narrated, without a connecting link, from Ibn Masʿud, as well as from Abu Umayyah al-Habaṭi. ʿAbd al-Karim al-Jazari, Shuʿbah, Muhammad ibn Salamah, and ʿAttab ibn Bashir narrated from him.”

Yet he gave neither narrator criticism nor accreditation concerning him. Ibn Hibban mentioned him in al-Thiqat (1/136).

Sulayman ibn ʿAta was Ibn Qays al-Qurashi, Abu ʿAmr al-Jazari. Al-Hafiz said: “His hadith are rejected.” Al-Haythami cited the hadith in al-Majmaʿ (10/186) with the wording: “Keep me steadfast upon it until I meet You.” He said: “Al-Tabarani narrated it in al-Awsat, and its narrators are trustworthy.”

I say: Perhaps he had it through another route.

Note: The commentator on al-Tahawiyyah cited the hadith (p. 358), from the narration of Abu Ismaʿil al-Ansari in his book al-Faruq, with his chain from Anas, with the same wording. When I traced the sources of the aforementioned commentary, I appended this note: “I have not found its chain of transmission, and I do not think it is authentic. Regrettably, we have not been able to locate the book al-Faruq.”

Then one of the eminent scholars directed me to the aforementioned narration of al-Tabarani, as I explained in the introduction to the commentary just mentioned. There I clarified that al-Haythami’s statement, “its narrators are trustworthy,” does not mean that it is authentic; so refer to it. Then I came across the chain of transmission of the hadith in al-Silafi, as you have seen. If al-Tabarani’s route is the same as his, then the hadith is weak. I have reservations about this matter, so let us wait and see what may come to light.

I subsequently came across the hadith in Tarikh Baghdad, which transmitted it (11/160) through the route of ʿIsa ibn Khallad ibn Buwayb: ʿAttab ibn Bashir narrated to us; Abu Wasil ʿAbd al-Hamid narrated to us, from Anas, with the same wording.