Harun narrated to us: Bahr al-Saqqa narrated to us, from Amr ibn Dinar, from Salim, from Ibn Umar, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said—and he cited it. He then said: “No one narrated it from Amr ibn Dinar except Bahr al-Saqqa; Yazid ibn Harun alone narrated it from him.”

I say: He is trustworthy and among the narrators used by the two Shaykhs, as are those above him in the chain, apart from Bahr al-Saqqa, who is weak, as stated in al-Taqrib. As for Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Khallad al-Wasiti, I have found no biographical notice for him. However, Aslam al-Wasiti, known as Bahshal, narrated several hadiths from him in his Tarikh Wasit (pp. 72, 119, and 213), and referred to him by the kunyah Abu Umayyah. Elsewhere (p. 152), he narrated from him through Abdullah ibn Abi Dawud al-Sijistani, who said: “Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Khallad, Abu Umayyah, narrated to me …” and then cited a report. As was his habit, he mentioned no narrator criticism or accreditation concerning him; thus, his uprightness is unknown. I later found him mentioned in Ibn Hibban’s work on reliable narrators (8/386).

Moreover, al-Tabarani’s statement that Bahr al-Saqqa was alone in narrating it from Amr ibn Dinar is disproved by what al-Tabarani himself narrated in al-Mujam al-Kabir (3/194/2/1): al-Hasan ibn Ali al-Fasawi narrated to us; Said ibn Sulayman narrated to us; Abu al-Rabi al-Samman informed us, from Amr ibn Dinar—with the wording rearranged—as follows: “The food of two suffices four, and the food of four suffices eight. So gather around it, and do not separate from it.”

True, Abu al-Rabi al-Samman—whose name was Ashath ibn Said al-Basri—is as weak as Bahr al-Saqqa, or even weaker. Nevertheless, the hadith itself is established: its first statement has been reported in hadiths, some of which have preceded under nos. 664 and 895; and the remainder is found in Sahih Muslim and elsewhere, on the authority of Jabir. Its documentation has already been given under hadith 1686.