through the fourth route as well. And Allah knows best.

Note: In al-Majma‘ (9/146), al-Haythami cited the hadith through the narration of Abu al-Tufayl, who said: “Al-Hasan ibn Ali addressed us ...”—the hadith in its entirety, like the fourth route, and containing the aforementioned addition. Al-Haythami then said: “Al-Tabarani narrated it in al-Awsat and al-Kabir in abridged form, as did Abu Ya‘la; al-Bazzar narrated something similar; and Ahmad narrated it in a greatly abridged form. Ahmad’s chain of transmission, as well as some of al-Bazzar’s and al-Tabarani’s routes, are good.”

I say: I have traced for you all the narrations of these imams and their routes—apart from the route of Abu al-Tufayl, which I had not yet come across—and all of them are abridged, as al-Haythami explicitly stated. None of them contains that objectionable addition found in al-Hakim’s narration. Once you know this, the error of the jurist al-Haytami in al-Sawa‘iq (p. 101) becomes clear, when he said: “Al-Bazzar and al-Tabarani narrated from al-Hasan, may Allah be pleased with him, through several routes, some of which are good, that he delivered a sermon, one part of which was: ‘Whoever knows me knows me ...’” and so on.

The explanation is that he came across the aforementioned hadith documentation of al-Hafiz al-Haythami and summarized it poorly, failing to notice that the sermon in its full length was uniquely reported by al-Tabarani’s al-Awsat, rather than by the others; and that the grading of “good” applies only to some of their routes, among which the route of Abu al-Tufayl is not included. This is one of the matters which al-Haythami passed over in silence—to great regret.

I subsequently came across its chain of transmission in al-Awsat (2344, according to my numbering), and it is narrated by Sallam ibn Abi ‘Amrah, from Ma‘ruf ibn Kharbudh, from Abu al-Tufayl. Regarding this Sallam, Ibn Hibban said in al-Du‘afa’ (1/341): “He narrates inverted reports from trustworthy narrators; it is not permissible to cite his report as evidence.”