“Mastūr (of unknown reliability).”

I say: A narrator of this kind cannot be used as corroborative evidence, even at the lowest level. Ismāʿīl ibn Marzūq was the Egyptian al-Murādī al-Kaʿbī. Ibn Ḥibbān mentioned him in al-Thiqāt, and al-Ṭaḥāwī criticized him; yet al-Ḥāfiẓ regarded the chain of transmission of another hadith narrated through him as unobjectionable. As for Aḥmad ibn Ismāʿīl, I have not identified him at present; and Tarīkh Baghdād contains a number of narrators bearing this name.

The third route: Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Khaffāf narrated from Ḥabīb ibn Abī Ḥabīb, from Anas ibn Mālik, who said—and he cited it with similar wording as a statement of Anas himself. This is the report to which al-Tirmidhī alluded above. Al-Wāsiṭī likewise recorded it in his history (p. 40) through two routes from him.

This Ḥabīb was Ibn Abī Ḥabīb al-Bajalī, a Basran who settled in Kūfah. Tuʿmah ibn ʿAmr al-Jaʿfarī and ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAnqazī also narrated from him. Ibn Ḥibbān mentioned him among the trustworthy narrators, and al-Ḥāfiẓ said: “Acceptable”—that is, when corroborated. And he has indeed been corroborated, as stated above.

As for Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Khaffāf, whose name was Khālid ibn Ṭahmān, he was truthful, but his memory became confused. Al-Wāsiṭī then narrated it through Muʾammal ibn Ismāʿīl, from Sufyān, from Khālid, from Abū ʿUmayrah, from Anas ibn Mālik, with the same wording. This Abū ʿUmayrah was trustworthy, and he was the son of Anas ibn Mālik. Khālid was the aforementioned Ibn Ṭahmān; thus, it appears that he was inconsistent in its chain of transmission: at times he narrated it from Abū ʿUmayrah, from Anas, and at other times directly from Anas, omitting Abū ʿUmayrah. This was perhaps due to his confused memory.

I say: In sum, although the individual routes are not free of a hidden defect, taken together