I say: This chain of transmission is sound. Although on the surface it appears to be a missive (mursal) report, ʿUrwah is the son of al-Zubayr, whose mother was Asmāʾ, the sister of ʿĀʾishah, making ʿĀʾishah his maternal aunt. The report is therefore to be treated as connected, and it is actually found with an explicitly connected chain. Imām Aḥmad (6/186) – and, following him, al-Dulābī in al-Kunā wa’l-Asmāʾ (1/152) – recorded: “ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ Abū Ḥafṣ al-Muʿīṭī narrated to us; he said: Hishām ibn ʿUrwah narrated to us from his father, from ʿĀʾishah,” with wording to the same effect and including the additional phrase.

This chain, too, is sound, for Abū Ḥātim said of this ʿUmar, “There is no problem with him,” and Ibn Ḥibbān listed him in al-Thiqāt. Ḥammād ibn Zayd corroborated it, saying: “Hishām ibn ʿUrwah narrated it to us.” That version was recorded by Abū Dāwūd (490), Aḥmad (6/107, 260) and Abū Yaʿlā (Q 214/2).

Wakīʿ also narrated it, saying: “from Hishām, from a man among the descendants of al-Zubayr, from her,” and Aḥmad preserved this wording as well (6/186, 213). That unidentified man is ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr, as is explicit in the transmissions of Ḥammād ibn Zayd, ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ and Maʿmar mentioned earlier; Qarān ibn Tammām reported it in the same way, according to Abū Dāwūd.

Meanwhile, Abū Usāmah, Ḥammād ibn Salamah and Muslimah ibn Qaʿnabb transmitted it from Hishām and actually named the man: “ʿAbbād ibn Ḥamzah,” the son of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr. He is trustworthy, and, being of al-Zubayr’s lineage, could well be the person Hishām meant in Wakīʿ’s narration. In either case, the ḥadīth is sound, for it is transmitted through either ʿUrwah or ʿAbbād, both of whom are reliable. The more likely explanation is that it comes through both of them together, as the soundness of the two independent chains for each suggests.