2692 — “When a believer meets another believer, greets him, takes his hand, and shakes hands with him, their sins fall away as the leaves of a tree fall.”

Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Awsaṭ (no. 243 in my copy): Aḥmad ibn Rushdīn narrated to us: Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr informed us: Mūsā ibn Rabīʿah informed us, from Mūsā ibn Suwayd al-Jumaḥī, from al-Walīd ibn Abī al-Walīd, from Yaʿqūb al-Ḥuraqī, from Ḥudhayfah ibn al-Yamān, from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, who said it. He added: “No one narrated this hadith from al-Walīd ibn Abī al-Walīd except Mūsā ibn Rabīʿah.”

I say: He is trustworthy, as Abū Zurʿah stated, as recorded in al-Jarḥ wa-l-Taʿdīl (4/1/142–143). However, I have not found any biographical entry for his shaykh, Mūsā ibn Suwayd al-Jumaḥī. The apparent meaning of al-Haythamī’s statement—which I had previously cited from him under this hadith (526), when I traced it on the authority of him and al-Mundhirī—is that he is trustworthy. For he said: “Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Awsaṭ. More than one person narrated from Yaʿqūb ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ṭalḥāʾ, and no one declared him weak; the rest of its narrators are trustworthy.”

I say: The latter part of this statement, by its general wording, includes Mūsā ibn Suwayd al-Jumaḥī. Perhaps he is included in Ibn Ḥibbān’s Thiqāt, or perhaps some corruption occurred in his name, obscuring his identity from us. Allah knows best.

I had also found al-Haythamī’s statement concerning this Yaʿqūb—that more than one person narrated from him—strange, for a reason I mentioned there; refer to it if you wish. Now that I have come across the chain of transmission of the hadith in al-Awsaṭ, it has become clear to me that this objection was justified and that al-Haythamī bears no responsibility for it. Rather, it is the publisher of his book, al-Sayyid al-Qudsī, because of his ignorance of this discipline and his audacity