“Abu Bakr was one of the meticulous masters of memorisation, yet Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān and Ibn al-Madīnī thought poorly of him. That was because, when he grew old, his memory deteriorated and he would sometimes err while narrating. Error and inadvertence are things from which no human being is free. If a man’s mistakes become so numerous that they outweigh what he gets right, then his narrations deserve to be avoided. But when a person only slips on occasion or makes the odd mistake, his ḥadith is not to be abandoned after his uprightness and sound audition have already been established.”

He then said:

“The correct position with regard to him is to set aside what is known to be erroneous and to accept as evidence what he transmits, whether or not it corresponds to the reports of the trustworthy narrators. He belongs to the ranks of the upright, and once a man’s uprightness has been verified he is not to be criticised or disparaged unless that uprightness is nullified by one of the recognised causes of jarḥ (disparagement). This same ruling applies to every trustworthy muḥaddith whose uprightness is confirmed even though some of his errors are also certain.”

I say: For this very reason al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar explicitly declared this isnād authentic in Fatḥ al-Bārī and added (6 / 154), “For the men in its chain are used as proof in the Ṣaḥīḥ.”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr had made a similar statement before him, as will be mentioned, and so did al-Dhahabī, as cited in Tanzīh al-Sharīʿah (1 / 379).

The second route: Imām Aḥmad also said (2 / 318): “ʿAbd al-Razzāq ibn Hammām narrated to us; Maʿmar narrated to us, from Hammām, from Abū Hurayrah, who said: ‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ …’” He then listed more than one hundred ḥadiths with this isnād, and this ḥadith is one of them. All of them are found in the Ṣaḥīfah of Hammām ibn Munabbih, which Abū ʾl-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Sulamī transmitted from ʿAbd al-Razzāq with the same chain; this ḥadith appears there as number 123.

Muslim likewise recorded it in his Ṣaḥīḥ (5 / 145) through the route of Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ—“ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us …”—with the second wording, and the wording is that of Muslim.