The editor of al-Tārīkh considered it likely that what led al-Ḥāfiẓ and others to assign this statement of al-Bukhārī to the biography of the younger man was that Ibn al-Madīnī and ʿAmr ibn ʿAlī had declared him weak, while deeming this Anṣārī narrator trustworthy. He then replied to Sulaymān’s accusation of lying by stating, in summary, that it is an unspecified and unexplained criticism, since it rests on an incident that does not necessarily establish the alleged lie in a manner that admits of no interpretation. Consult his discussion, for it is beneficial.

In conclusion, Ḥarb ibn Maymūn the elder—the narrator of this hadith—was a trustworthy authority. Ibn al-Madīnī, al-Bukhārī’s teacher, al-Fallās, and al-Sājī declared him trustworthy; likewise Muslim, by including his hadith in the Ṣaḥīḥ; Ibn Ḥibbān, by listing him in al-Thiqāt; and al-Khaṭīb, who said of him, “He was trustworthy.” No one declared him weak apart from Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb’s aforementioned statement concerning him, the answer to which you have already seen. Moreover, he is not Ḥarb ibn Maymūn the younger, as has preceded from a number of the imams.

On this occasion, it is necessary to point out another error that occurs in the biography of this younger man in Ibn Ḥajar’s Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb. He said (2/227): “Al-Mizzī said: ‘More than one scholar has conflated the two, and that is correct, if Allah Most High wills.’” What I have seen in al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī’s Tahdhīb al-Kamāl is contrary to this. After giving the biography of the elder, he followed it with that of the younger and said at its end: “We have mentioned him in order to distinguish between the two. More than one scholar has conflated them, and more than one has distinguished between them; and the latter is correct, if Allah Most High wills.” It therefore appears that the sentence, “and more than one has distinguished between them,” was omitted by the copyist or printer of Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, thereby disrupting the meaning. And Allah knows best.