Al-Ḥākim narrated it (2/450), and al-Bayhaqī likewise narrated it from him. Al-Ḥākim said: “Authentic according to the conditions of the two Shaykhs.” Al-Dhahabī agreed with him, and it is as they said. For the two trustworthy narrators agreed in transmitting it with a connected chain from Ibn Abī Dhiʾb, from al-Maqburī, with this report. Thus, either it may be said that what the two agreed upon is more weighty than Hishām’s lone mursal transmission; or it may be said that all of them are authentic, and that Ibn Abī Dhiʾb had two chains: one from al-Maqburī, from Abū Hurayrah, and the other from al-Zuhrī as a mursal report. Each preserved from him what he heard from him, and each is trustworthy. And Allah knows best.

The hadith has a supporting report, with a weak chain of transmission, from Ibn ʿAbbās, which we have cited in the other book (3033).

A benefit: Ibn ʿAsākir said: “This uncertainty on the part of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was before his matter had been made clear to him. He was then informed that he had been a Muslim, and this is in what was related to us …” He then cited its chain of transmission with the hadith: “Do not revile Tubbaʿ, for he had embraced Islam.” It was narrated by him and by Aḥmad (5/340), from Ibn Lahīʿah, who said: Abū Zurʿah ʿAmr ibn Jābir narrated to us, from Sahl ibn Saʿd, in a report attributed to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Abū Zurʿah and Ibn Lahīʿah are both weak. However, the hadith has supporting reports by which it rises to the rank of good, at the very least, as will be explained, Allah willing, under no. 2423.

I say: Similar to this is al-Haythamī’s statement: “It is possible that he, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said this at a time when knowledge concerning it had not yet come to him from Allah; then, when it came to him, he said what we have narrated in the hadith of ʿUbādah and others.” He meant the Prophet’s saying, may Allah bless him and grant him peace: