198 – “Whoever forgets to mention Allah at the beginning of his meal, let him say when he remembers: ‘In the name of Allah, at its beginning and at its end.’ By doing so he starts his food anew, and the vile one (Satan) is prevented from taking what he had been taking from it.”

Ibn Ḥibbān recorded it in his Ṣaḥīḥ (1340 – al-Mawārid), Ibn al-Sunnī in ʿAmal al-Yawm wa’l-Laylah (no. 453), and al-Ṭabarānī in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (3/74/1) through the chain of transmission: Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ → ʿUmar ibn ʿAlī al-Maqdamī → Mūsā al-Juhanī, who said: Qāsim ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd informed me, from his father, from his grandfather, who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said… and he quoted the ḥadīth.

I (al-Albānī) say: This isnād is authentic; every narrator in it is reliable. Mūsā al-Juhanī is the son of ʿAbd Allāh—some say the son of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān—known as Abū Salamah, and also called Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Kūfī.

Al-Haythamī remarked (5/235): “Al-Ṭabarānī related it in al-Awsat and al-Kabīr, and its narrators are trustworthy.”

I further say: This same Abū Salamah al-Juhanī has another ḥadīth with this very chain, but in that report he appears only by his kunyah, without being named. That concealed his identity from the leading ḥadīth critics, who therefore judged him unknown; al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dhahabī and others stated this explicitly. I myself was misled by this for a time and held back from authenticating the ḥadīth in question—until I came across the present narration about food and discovered that it is transmitted by Mūsā al-Juhanī. That opened up for me the way—