“These hadiths, along with others that I have not mentioned, are mostly reports in which Muḥammad ibn Thābit has no corroborating narrator.”
Yes, had al-Tirmidhī said, “A good hadith,” he would have been correct, for I have found for it both a corroborating chain and a supporting report. As for the corroborating chain: Zāʾidah ibn Abī al-Riqād said: Ziyād al-Numayrī narrated to us from Anas, with the same wording. Abū Nuʿaym recorded it in al-Ḥilyah (6/268). Ziyād and Zāʾidah are weak, though both were declared trustworthy. Al-Haythamī (10/77) graded another hadith of theirs from Anas as good, saying, “Its chain of transmission is good.” I say: at the very least, their report may be cited as corroborative evidence.
As for the supporting report, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿĀmir narrated it: Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd narrated to us; Mālik narrated to us, from Nāfiʿ, from Sālim, from Ibn ʿUmar, attributed to the Prophet, with the same wording. Abū Nuʿaym recorded it (6/354) and said: “It is singular among Mālik’s narrations; we have only recorded it through Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿĀmir.”
I say: I did not recognize him. It is possible that “ʿĀmir” is a corruption of “Numayr”; if so, he is trustworthy. Then I found what supports the view that he is indeed the same person, for al-Mizzī mentioned him among those who narrated from Qutaybah. All those above him are trustworthy narrators whose reports appear in the two Ṣaḥīḥs. Thus, the chain of transmission is authentic, provided that Abū Nuʿaym’s teacher—Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Maqdisī—is trustworthy, or that he has a corroborating narrator. For I found no biographical notice for him, not even in Ibn ʿAsākir’s History. Nevertheless, Abū Nuʿaym’s preceding description of it as singular indicates that he had been corroborated. And Allah knows best.
Zayd ibn al-Ḥubāb narrated that Ḥumayd al-Makkī, the freedman of Ibn ʿAlqamah, told him that ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ told him, from Abū Hurayrah, attributed to the Prophet, with the same wording, except that in place of “the circles of remembrance,” he said: