“The hadith was recorded by Aḥmad and ʿAbd al-Razzāq with an authentic chain of transmission, using Muslim’s wording.” His statement, “using Muslim’s wording,” is an oversight, for Muslim did not narrate it from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Shibl at all—neither with this wording nor with any other. Rather, he recorded something similar from Abū Hurayrah, but without the phrase: “Whoever responds ...”

2200 — “Let a man pray in the mosque nearest to him, and not seek out other mosques.”

Tamām al-Rāzī recorded it (217/2) through Baqiyyah ibn al-Walīd: Mujāshiʿ ibn ʿAmr narrated to us; Manṣūr ibn Abī al-Aswad narrated to me; from ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, from Nāfiʿ, from Ibn ʿUmar.

I say: This is a broken chain of transmission, and its defect lies with Mujāshiʿ. Ibn Maʿīn said of him: “One of the liars.” Baqiyyah once concealed him in transmission. Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ḥarbī recorded it in A Section of His Hadith (39/1), through Baqiyyah, from Manṣūr ibn Abī al-Aswad, with this chain. Thus, he omitted Mujāshiʿ from between himself and Manṣūr, and then narrated it with an ambiguous transmission formula.

However, it was also narrated through another route. Al-Ṭabarānī said (3/199/2): Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Naṣr al-Tirmidhī narrated to us; ʿUbādah ibn Ziyād al-Asadī informed us; Zuhayr ibn Muʿāwiyah informed us; from ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, with this chain. He also recorded it with this chain in al-Awsaṭ (22/2 of its arrangement) and said: “None narrated it from Zuhayr except ʿUbādah.”

I say: He is truthful, but Ibn Naṣr al-Tirmidhī was trustworthy and then became severely confused. His biography appears in al-Tārīkh (1/365–366) and Lisān al-Mīzān. Al-Haythamī did not identify him (2/24). Yet al-Ṭabarānī’s statement indicates that he was not alone in narrating it, so the chain is good. As for ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq’s statement in al-Aḥkām (33/2), “I know of no judgment concerning Mujāshiʿ except that he was sound in hadith,”