“No report from Wahb, from Tawus, is narrated except through this chain of transmission; al-Halwani alone narrated it.”

I say: He is trustworthy and one of al-Bukhari’s and Muslim’s shaykhs, but the shaykh of his shaykh, ʿAbd Allah ibn Safwan, is weak. Al-ʿUqayli listed him in al-Duʿafaʾ (p. 209) and narrated from Hisham ibn Yusuf that he was asked about him and replied: “He was weak and did not preserve hadith.” He then cited this hadith under him: “Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Hadrami narrated it to us; al-Hasan ibn ʿAli al-Halwani narrated it to us,” with the same chain. The two additions are from him. He then said: “This hadith is also reported through another route, which likewise contains some weakness.”

I say: He seems to be referring to the preceding narration. Idris ibn the daughter of Wahb is weak, and he is among the narrators covered in al-Tahdhib. As for Ghawth ibn Jabir ibn Ghaylan, Ibn Maʿin said: “There was no harm in him,” as stated in al-Jarh wa al-Taʿdil (3/2/58). Al-Tabarani’s shaykh, Muhammad ibn ʿAli al-Saʾigh, is the Meccan, as stated in al-Muʿjam al-Saghir, though I found no biographical notice for him. Then I saw that al-Dhahabi had declared him trustworthy in al-Siyar (13/428), and that al-Tabarani narrated from him in al-Awsat about fifty hadiths. Moreover, he is corroborated by al-Hadrami, as mentioned above.

In sum, all the narrators in the chain are known. It is therefore surprising that al-Hafiz al-Haythami said (3/243): “Al-Tabarani narrated it in al-Awsat, and it contains a group of narrators for whom I have found no biographical notices.” Perhaps he was not able to discover the omission in al-Tabarani’s chain of transmission, and so it escaped his notice that