Hilāl ibn Ḥiṣn also narrated from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī a report and hadith similar to this account, except that he said: “Whoever asks us, we will not withhold from him anything that we find.” Al-Ṭabarī transmitted it (5/598/6228) through Qatādah, from him.

Ibn Abī Ḥātim included this Hilāl (4/73), likewise through the narration of Abū Ḥamzah from him, but did not mention any criticism or accreditation concerning him. Ibn Ḥibbān, however, listed him in al-Thiqāt (1/280–281, Indian edition). Those below him in the chain are trustworthy narrators cited by al-Bukhārī and Muslim, apart from Bishr—namely Bishr ibn Muʿādh al-ʿAqdī, al-Ṭabarī’s teacher—who is trustworthy.

Aḥmad also transmitted it (3/44) through Abū Ḥamzah, from Hilāl ibn Ḥiṣn, with a similar wording. This Abū Ḥamzah is ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Māzinī, a neighbor of Shuʿbah; he is trustworthy and one of Muslim’s narrators. In his notes on al-Tārīkh (4/2/204), the eminent Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Muʿallimī maintained that “Abū Ḥamzah” is a scribal corruption, and that the correct reading is “Abū Jamrah”: Naṣr ibn ʿImrān al-Ḍubaʿī, for al-Mizzī listed this Hilāl ibn Ḥiṣn among Abū Jamrah’s teachers.

I say: There is no basis for this correction, since all the textual sources agree that it is Abū Ḥamzah. Declaring them all mistaken merely because al-Mizzī listed Abū Jamrah—with a jīm—among Hilāl’s teachers is insufficient evidence for the alleged scribal corruption, since it is possible that both Abū Ḥamzah and Abū Jamrah narrated from Hilāl. And Allah knows best.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ stated definitively, in Abū Ḥamzah’s entry in al-Taʿjīl, that he was known as the neighbor of Shuʿbah and that his name was ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yazīd al-Laythī also narrated it from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī: