This is how it appears there: “Abū Yaḥyā al-ʿArābī.” Apparently, this is an error by either the printer or the copyist; the correct reading is: “Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ghazzāl.”

As for his statement, “And I do not know him ...,” what appears in The Trustworthy Narrators is: “I do not know his father or his grandfather.” This is perhaps the correct wording. Then al-Ḥāfiẓ said after the foregoing: “I say: Among the Companions was Muṭīʿ ibn al-Ḥakam. Ibn Mandah recorded for him, through the route of Muṭīʿ ibn so-and-so ibn Muṭīʿ ibn al-Ḥakam, from his father, from his great-grandfather, the hadith mentioned first. Likewise, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr listed the aforementioned Muṭīʿ among the Companions; his kunyah was Abū Muslim, a poet, son of a poet.”

I say: I did not find him in Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s al-Istīʿāb, neither under the names nor under the kunyahs. Nor did al-Ḥāfiẓ himself include him in either of these in al-Iṣābah. And Allah knows best.

In sum, Muṭīʿ al-Ghazzāl is distinct from Muṭīʿ al-Anṣārī in the view of Ibn Abī Ḥātim and his father. Yet it appears from al-Bukhārī’s and Ibn Ḥibbān’s treatment that they are one and the same, since they mentioned no one else, and it was for him that they cited this hadith from his father, from his grandfather. Thus, the hidden defect in the hadith lies either with someone above him—which is what Ibn Ḥibbān’s remarks apparently indicate, for he said immediately afterward: “Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim and the people of Kūfah narrated from him. I do not know his father or his grandfather, and the report is not authentic through another route, so it may serve as corroboration”—or with the narrator from him, Muḥammad al-Qāsim, namely Abū Ibrāhīm al-Asadī al-Kūfī. Ibn Abī Ḥātim included his biography (4/1/65), noting that a group of trustworthy narrators related from him. He also related from Ibn Maʿīn that he said: “Trustworthy; I have written from him.” Abū Ḥātim said: “He is not strong; I do not find his hadith satisfactory.”