“Muʿāwiyah wrote to ʿĀʾishah, Mother of the Believers—may Allah be pleased with her—saying: ‘Write me a letter offering me counsel, but do not be too lengthy.’ So ʿĀʾishah—may Allah be pleased with her—wrote to Muʿāwiyah: ‘Peace be upon you. To proceed: I heard the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, say …’” Then he cited it.

This is a chain of transmission whose narrators are trustworthy and are among the narrators used by Muslim, apart from the unnamed man. However, he was a Successor, so his report may be taken as corroborative; moreover, his hadith is strengthened by the preceding routes. In sum, the hadith has been authenticated from ʿĀʾishah both as attributed to the Prophet and as attributed to the Companion herself, and there is no contradiction between the two, for the reason already mentioned. Allah knows best.

It also has a supporting report from Ibn ʿAbbās, attributed to the Prophet, with the wording: “Whoever incurs Allah’s displeasure in seeking people’s approval, Allah will be displeased with him and will cause those whose approval he sought at the cost of His displeasure to be displeased with him. And whoever pleases Allah despite people’s displeasure, Allah will be pleased with him and will cause those whom he displeased in seeking His pleasure to be pleased with him, until He makes him—and his words and deeds—appear admirable in their eyes.”

Al-Ṭabarānī recorded it in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (3/132/1/1): “Jabrūn ibn ʿĪsā al-Muqriʾ narrated to us; Yaḥyā ibn Sulaymān al-Ḥafrī informed us; Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ informed us, from Manṣūr, from ʿIkrimah, from him.” This al-Ḥafrī has been criticized, as Abū Nuʿaym stated, and I have not found any biographical notice for Jabrūn. Nevertheless, al-Targhīb (3/154) says: “Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it with a good, strong chain!”

Note: This al-Ḥafrī is spelled with an undotted ḥāʾ. This is how it appears in al-Ṭabarānī’s al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr in the chain of transmission of this hadith and of others before and after it. In the first of these hadiths, al-Ḥafrī appears with a ḍammah over the ḥāʾ and beneath it what looks like two dots. Perhaps one of them is a small speck resembling a dot, which appeared in the photographic reproduction of the book beside the original dot. On this basis, the original reading would be al-Jafrī, with a jīm. It likewise occurs in another hadith narrated by Jabrūn from him in al-Muʿjam al-Ṣaghīr (p. 68, Indian edition), and also in al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ (no. 3539, my photographic copy). Al-Samʿānī likewise mentioned him in al-Ansāb,