2632 — “Whenever a servant comes to visit his brother for the sake of Allah, a caller from heaven proclaims: ‘May you be blessed, and may Paradise be blessed for you.’ Or Allah says in the dominion of His Throne: ‘My servant has visited for My sake, and it is incumbent upon Me to receive him as a guest; and I am not pleased to grant him any hospitality short of Paradise.’”

It was narrated by Abu Ya‘la in his Musnad (3/1024), al-Bazzar (2/388–389), Abu Nu‘aym in al-Hilyah (3/107), and al-Diya’ in al-Mukhtarah (fol. 240/1), by way of Yusuf ibn Ya‘qub: Maymun ibn Ajlan informed us, from Maymun ibn Siyah, from Anas, in a report traced back to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

Abu Nu‘aym said: “Al-Dahhak ibn Humrah narrated it likewise from Hammad ibn Ja‘far, from Maymun ibn Siyah.”

I say: Ibn Humrah is weak. However, all the narrators in the preceding chain are narrators of the Sahih collections, apart from this Maymun ibn Ajlan. Al-Bukhari included him in al-Tarikh (7/343), as did Ibn Abi Hatim (4/1/239), through the narration of this Yusuf from him. Neither of them mentioned any criticism or accreditation concerning him, except that Ibn Abi Hatim said: “My father was asked about him, and he replied: ‘He is a shaykh.’”

It should be known that one described as “a shaykh” falls into the third rank of accreditation: his hadith is recorded and examined, as Ibn Abi Hatim himself stated (1/1/37). The scholars have likewise proceeded on this basis, as can be seen in al-Tadrib (p. 232). This means either that only selected reports from him are accepted, or that his hadith is good provided that it is not contradicted. Al-Dhahabi may have alluded to this when he said in the introduction to al-Mizan: “I have not undertaken to mention those of whom it is said, ‘His standing is one of truthfulness’; nor those of whom it is said, ‘There is no harm in him’; nor those of whom it is said, ‘He is sound in hadith,’ ‘His hadith is recorded,’ or ‘He is a shaykh.’ For such descriptions, and others like them, indicate that he is not outright weak.”