“ʿAbd al-Salām al-Bajalī transmitted mursal reports. Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid narrated from him.”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ then remarked in al-Tahdhīb: “It is as though he did not witness the incident.” I say: This is likewise indicated by al-Bukhārī’s preceding statement. It is surprising that this statement escaped both him and al-Dhahabī, so that they neither mentioned it nor even alluded to it in their respective works, al-Tahdhīb and al-Mīzān.

As for al-Dhahabī’s earlier statement, “There is cause for concern regarding the hadith,” I do not know its basis—especially since he himself declared it authentic through the route of Ibn Abī al-Aswad. This also answers al-ʿUqaylī’s statement: “It is not reported through any established route.” Even if we were to concede that, it has been transmitted through several routes containing no narrator accused of dishonesty or abandoned; thus, there can be no doubt that some of them strengthen others, as is the rule among hadith scholars.

I then began to doubt the authenticity of the incident mentioned at the beginning of the documentation, because it is narrated by ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Siwār al-Hāshimī from Minjāb. Al-Bayhaqī likewise related it in Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah (2/2/189/1), except that he said: “from Yazīd al-Faqīr, from his father,” thus adding, “from his father.” After the words “Ibn Abī al-Aswad,” he further added: “The hadith of one of them became incorporated into that of the other.”

The reason for my doubt is that I have not identified this Ibn Siwār. I searched for him in the biographical works on narrators available to me, but found nothing; I therefore fear that he was not well-known as a transmitter, for al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī did not list him among those who narrated from Minjāb. Moreover, if al-Bayhaqī’s first addition has been reliably preserved, it constitutes another hidden defect, because I have likewise found no biographical notice for Abū Yazīd al-Faqīr—whose name was Ṣuhayb.