And it seems that he was misled by this, or that he happened to concur in this error with the annotator of Mushkil al-Athar—the Indian edition—for he wrote: “In al-Khulasah, he is Abd al-Rahman ibn Hujayrah—the first vowel being u and the j vowel being a—the elder, Abu Abdullah al-Khawlani, judge of Egypt.” This contains another error as well: attributing this identification to al-Khulasah, which says nothing beyond: “Abd al-Rahman ibn Hujayrah...”

The upshot is that the defect in this chain of transmission is the unknown status of this Ibn Hujayr. Yet the hadith is authentic, for it is found in the two Sahihs, al-Adab al-Mufrad (1150), Abu Dawud (4815), Ibn Hibban (594—al-Ihsan), al-Tahawi as well, and Ahmad (3/36), from the hadith of Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, attributed to the Prophet, in similar wording. Muslim (7/2) also narrated it from Abu Talhah, may Allah be pleased with him, but without the words: “guiding the lost person.” Abu Sa'id added: “refraining from harm, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong.”

In a narration of Ahmad (3/61), through Abd al-Razzaq—and this is found in al-Musannaf (11/20/19786)—from a man from Abu Sa'id, with the same report, he mentioned in place of “refraining from harm”: “Guide the one who asks.” This has the same meaning as “guiding the lost person.” The wording of Abu Talhah is: [“lowering the gaze, returning the greeting, and speaking well”]. The meaning referred to has also occurred in other hadiths from Abu Hurayrah and al-Bara ibn