“He is not trustworthy and has been accused.” He then cited, through his aforementioned chain from Anas, a hadith attributed to the Prophet: “Part of venerating Me is to honor the elders of my Ummah.” He said: “I say: He is the one accused of fabricating this.”

Ibn al-Jawzi cited this route in al-‘Ilal (Hidden Defects), from the hadith of Bakr ibn Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Wasiti, from Ya‘qub ibn Tahiyyah, with this chain. He said: “Bakr and Ya‘qub are unknown.” Al-Hafiz mentioned this and concurred with it, but overlooked the fact that Bakr was corroborated in al-Khatib and elsewhere, as I indicated above when tracing its sources, saying: “Through several routes from Ya‘qub.” Thus, the hidden defect is confined to Ya‘qub alone.

Fourthly: [It is reported] from Nubayt ibn ‘Amr, from Anas, in a hadith attributed to the Prophet, with the wording: “Whoever performs forty prayers in this mosque of mine, without missing a single prayer, will have recorded for him a certificate of immunity ...” the hadith.

I say: This Nubayt is unknown, and the hadith with this wording is rejected, because Nubayt alone narrated it and because its text contradicts that of everyone else who narrated from Anas, as is apparent. I had previously included it in al-Da‘ifah (no. 364), which makes it unnecessary to trace its sources here.

Strangely, one of our brothers among the scholars of hadith hastily wrote an article, published in the Journal of the Salafi University, in which he sought to strengthen this rejected hadith, overlooking Nubayt’s unknown status and the contradiction between the text of his hadith and the preceding routes. I was compelled to say “overlooking,” because in his refutation of al-Ghumari concerning some hadiths on tawassul, he explicitly stated that