Marwan al-Hadhdhaʾ al-Ahwazi narrated to us: Sulaym ibn Akhdar narrated to us, from Suʿayr ibn al-Khams, from Abu Ghalib, from Abu Umamah, attributing it to the Prophet. I say: This is a good chain of transmission, and its narrators are trustworthy, were it not that I have found no biographical notice for Ahmad ibn Shihab. Yet it appears that he was not alone in narrating it, for al-Haythami said (3/21): “Al-Tabarani transmitted it in al-Kabir, and it contains Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Shami, who narrated from Abu Khalid; I found no biographical notice for him.”

Then al-Tabarani’s al-Muʿjam al-Kabir was published, and I found the hadith in it through two routes from Abu Ghalib. The first was through the aforementioned route of Suʿayr, which revealed to me an error in the name of Ahmad al-Ahwazi’s father: “Shihab”; the correct name is “Sahl.” Al-Tabarani said (8/337/8077): Ahmad ibn Sahl ibn Ayyub al-Ahwazi narrated it to us with this chain. Ahmad ibn Sahl has a biographical notice in al-Lisan, but no criticism of him was related from anyone. However, it mentions one hadith of his concerning which it says: “This is a rejected report, with a composite chain …” It then states that he has two exceedingly odd reports, one of them in al-Tabarani’s al-Muʿjam al-Saghir. I say: It is also in al-Awsat (1/110/2/2220), and he has two other hadiths there (2218–2219). His first hadith is cited in al-Rawd (583).

The other route in al-Kabir (8078) is through Muʿtamir ibn Sulayman, from Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Shami, from Abu Ghalib, with this chain. I say: This is a chain whose narrators are trustworthy, apart from Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Shami; and you have already learned al-Haythami’s statement.