“Abandoned.” Yet this wording has also been reported through other routes from a number of the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, so it too is preserved. Its documentation has already appeared under no. 285; consult it if you wish.

1846 — “The best of you in Islam are those of finest character, when they acquire understanding.”

Al-Bukhārī narrated it in al-Adab al-Mufrad (285), as did Aḥmad (2/467, 469, and 481), through Ḥammād ibn Salamah, from Muḥammad ibn Ziyād, who said: I heard Abū Hurayrah say: I heard the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, say this.

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission; its narrators are those of Muslim, and its basis is found in the two Ṣaḥīḥs.

1847 — “The best days on which to undergo cupping are the seventeenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first. On the night I was taken on the Night Journey, I did not pass by any assembly of angels without their saying: ‘You should undergo cupping, O Muḥammad!’”

Al-Tirmidhī (2/5, Būlāq edition), al-Ḥākim (4/209 and 210), and Aḥmad (1/354)—whose wording is cited here—narrated it through ʿAbbād ibn Manṣūr, from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbās, attributing it to the Prophet.

Al-Ḥākim said: “Its chain of transmission is authentic.” Al-Dhahabī agreed with him. But it is not as they said, for this ʿAbbād ibn Manṣūr practised tadlīs. Al-Dhahabī himself said in al-Mīzān: “Everything he narrated from ʿIkrimah, he heard from Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Yaḥyā, from Dāwūd, from ʿIkrimah.” He then cited several hadiths of his, including the second part of this hadith. In al-Taqrīb, it states: “Truthful; accused of Qadari doctrine; he practised tadlīs and deteriorated in his later years.”