al-Hafiz, in al-Lisan, cites al-Dhahabi’s Talkhis as saying of al-Muntaṣir ibn ʿUmārah and his father: “They are unknown.”

Note: After writing the foregoing, I returned to some of my old source manuscripts in my possession and found that Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī recorded this hadith in Hadith Muḥammad ibn Bashshār (127/1), through the route of Shuʿbah, with the previously cited chain from Ḥudhayfah, both attributed to the Prophet and attributed to the Companion; the latter versions are more numerous. One of its chains contains the following:

“Bundār—namely, Muḥammad ibn Bashshār—said: ‘I said to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī: “Do you recall this hadith from Shuʿbah?” He replied: “Yes.” I said: “Narrate it to me.” He said: “Shuʿbah narrated to me from Yazīd Abū Khālid.” I asked him: “Al-Dālānī?” He replied: “Not al-Dālānī.” So I said: “There is someone here who narrates it from Shuʿbah, from Yazīd Abū Khālid al-Dālānī.” He pressed me to name him, so I said: “Ḥarmī ibn ʿUmārah.” He said: “Woe to him! How little he knows of hadith! Yazīd al-Dālānī was too young to have heard from Abū ʿUbaydah ibn Ḥudhayfah.”’”

I say: I find no basis for denying that he heard from him. According to al-Hafiz, Abū ʿUbaydah was a Successor of the second rank. They also report that Abū Khālid narrated from Qatādah, who, in his classification, stands at the head of the fourth rank; from Abū Isḥāq al-Sabīʿī, who belongs to the third; and from Yaḥyā ibn Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṭalḥah al-Anṣārī and Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saksakī, both of whom belong to the fifth. All of these narrated from the Companions, just as Abū ʿUbaydah did. So what prevents Abū Khālid from having heard from him, just as he heard from these Successors whom we have mentioned, as well as others whom we have not mentioned?

Indeed, this is what al-Hafiz’s treatment of Abū Khālid in his biographical notice indicates, for he said: “He belongs to the seventh rank.” In the introduction, he mentioned that the sixth rank consists of those who lived contemporaneously with the fifth, but whose meeting with any of the Companions has not been established, such as Ibn Jurayj; and that the seventh consists of the senior Followers of the Successors, such as Mālik and al-Thawrī.