nor can it be imagined that he should be judged weak because the objectionable nature of those hadiths is due to the narrator who transmitted them from him.” This is what he said. Although this absolves him of responsibility for those hadiths, it does not mean that he was a trustworthy narrator known for sound retention and precision. How could it, when he included him in his book Diwan al-Du‘afa’ wa al-Matrukin and said: “He is not to be used as evidence”? The narrator from him here is Sa‘id ibn Muhammad, whom I believe to be al-Warraq al-Thaqafi, Abu al-Hasan al-Kufi, a resident of Baghdad. He belonged to this generation and was weak, as al-Hafiz said. As for Ibrahim ibn al-Sari al-Harawi, I have found no biographical entry for him.

Yet the hadith is authentic in itself, for I found a corroborating report for its first clause. Ibn al-Mubarak said in al-Zuhd (152): Baqiyyah informed us: I heard Thabit ibn ‘Ajlan say: I heard al-Qasim Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman say: The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: “No reward is due to one who does not seek Allah’s reward.” This is a good mursal chain of transmission, in which Baqiyyah explicitly stated direct transmission. The other clause is supported by the well-known hadith: “Actions are only by intentions ...” Al-Bukhari, Muslim, and others recorded it, and it is cited in al-Irwa’ (1/59/22).

2416 — “There is no objection to exchanging one animal for two, hand to hand.”

Al-Tirmidhi (1238), Ibn Majah (2/38), Ahmad (3/310, 380, 382), and Ibn Abi Shaybah (8/191/2) recorded it from al-Hajjaj ibn Artah, from Abu al-Zubayr, from Jabir