“We know of no one who narrated it in this manner except Zakariyyā.”

I say: He was trustworthy, and one of al-Bukhārī’s shaykhs, though some criticism has been made of him. He died in 251 AH and therefore could not have met Shuʿayb ibn al-Ḥabḥāb, who died in 130 AH. Thus, it appears that an intermediary between them has been omitted from our defective copy of al-Zawāʾid. Al-Haythamī said in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid (1/58): “Al-Bazzār narrated it, and its narrators are trustworthy.”

It then became clear to me that the hadith is not narrated by Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā, but rather by his father, Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā. I found the hadith in Musnad Abī Yaʿlā (3/1031) with this chain from this shaykh, but it reads: “Abū Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Ṭāʾī, Abū Mālik, informed us; Shuʿayb narrated to us …” In al-Thiqāt by Ibn Ḥibbān (2/308), it states: “Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā, Abū Mālik al-Ṭāʾī, was from the people of Basra. He narrated from Shuʿayb ibn al-Ḥabḥāb, and Bandār narrated from him.”

I say: He, then, is the narrator of this hadith. But was he the father of Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā ibn ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ al-Ṭāʾī, Abū al-Sakīn al-Kūfī, who resided in Baghdad? That was what I initially thought, since they mentioned in his biography that he narrated from his father, and Abū Yaʿlā’s chain gives the name as “Abū Zakariyyā,” as you have seen. I then began to doubt that he was the same person when I saw that Ibn Ḥibbān named his father Zakariyyā, whereas none of the son’s forefathers named in his biography is called Zakariyyā. Allah knows best.

In any case, the hadith is authentic, for it has been authentically reported from Abū Hurayrah in separate reports, and its latter half has also been reported from ʿĀʾishah and others. Refer to what has preceded under nos. 284 and 521.