Muhammad ibn Hafs appears to have been Abu Ubayd al-Wassabi al-Himsi, who narrated from Muhammad ibn Humayr and others. Ibn Abi Hatim said (3/2/237): “I met him and intended to visit him and hear hadith from him, but one of the people of Homs told me: ‘He is not truthful, and he did not meet Muhammad ibn Humayr.’ So I left him.” Ibn Mandah said: “Weak.” Ibn Hibban included him among the reliable narrators and said: “He reports odd narrations.”

Al-Daylami narrated the hadith in Musnad al-Firdaws from Anas, as cited in al-Qawl al-Badi‘ (p. 222), but made no comment on its chain of transmission. Al-Manawi categorically declared it weak, saying: “Its chain contains Muhammad ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Dinawari, of whom al-Dhahabi said in al-Du‘afa’: ‘His hadith is rejected.’” He also definitively held that the previously cited narration of al-Tabarani has a good chain of transmission.

In sum, taken together, these chains and corroborating reports raise the hadith to no less than the rank of good, Allah willing, at the very least. I then came across its chain in al-Tabarani’s al-Awsat (4/448, Islamic University photocopy), and found that it runs through Amir ibn Yasar, who said: Abd al-Karim al-Jazari narrated to us from Abu Ishaq al-Hamdani, from al-Harith and Asim ibn Dumrah, from Ali, attributed to the Companion.

I say: This is a chain whose narrators are trustworthy, as al-Haythami stated above. However, Abu Ishaq—who is al-Subay‘i—was practising tadlis and had suffered memory deterioration, though this does not affect its value as a corroborating report. And Allah knows best.

Among its corroborating reports is that which al-Tirmidhi narrated (1/97) from Abu Qurrah al-Asadi, from Sa‘id ibn