- Ibn ʿAsākir also recorded it in the 139th session of his Amālī (1/50), and in his Tārīkh (12/232/1), through the chain: Ibrāhīm ibn Ṭahmān → Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah → Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir → Jābir, as a marfūʿ report. It likewise appears in “Mashyakhah Ibn Ṭahmān” (2/238).
Al-Ṭabarānī said: “No one transmitted it from Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah except Ibrāhīm ibn Ṭahmān.”
I say: He is reliable, as stated in al-Taqrīb; for that reason al-Dhahabī said in al-ʿUlūw (p. 58, Anṣār ed.): “Its chain is sound.” He then cited a corroborating report from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq → al-Faḍl ibn ʿĪsā → Yazīd al-Raqāshī → Anas, also marfūʿ, and remarked: “Its chain is feeble.”
Al-Haythamī, concerning the first route (1/80), said: “Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Awsat, and its transmitters are the transmitters of the Ṣaḥīḥ.”
Ṣidqah ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Qurashī likewise corroborated it with the wording: “Indeed, Allah has angels—the karūbiyyūn (cherubim); the distance from the earlobe of one of them to his collarbone is a journey of seven hundred years for a swift-flying bird in full descent.”
I have provided its chain and discussed it in al-Aḥādīth al-Ḍaʿīfah (no. 927).
There is also a supporting narration from Jābir and Ibn ʿAbbās, marfūʿ, to similar effect, recorded by Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilyah (3/158); it contains narrators unknown to me.