; except for Mujālid—namely, Ibn Saʿīd—whose weakness lies in his retention, though he was truthful in himself. Yet he was corroborated, as will follow, which shows that he had preserved it; thus, it is among his authentic narrations.

Al-Ṭabarānī also narrated it in al-Muʿjam al-Ṣaghīr (890—al-Rawḍ) through another route from Shuʿbah. Shuʿbah himself was corroborated in it: Aḥmad (4/274) and al-Ḥumaydī (2/409) said: Sufyān narrated to us; Mujālid narrated to us, saying: I heard al-Shaʿbī say: I heard al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr say … and he cited it with the wording: “Indeed, there is in the human being a morsel …” The hadith is similar in meaning. The wording is al-Ḥumaydī’s, while the addition is Aḥmad’s.

As for the corroboration of Mujālid, Aḥmad (4/270) said: Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd narrated to us, from Zakariyyā, who said: ʿĀmir narrated to us, saying: I heard al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr delivering a sermon and saying … He then cited it at the end of the hadith: “The lawful is clear, and the forbidden is clear …” In it occurs: “Indeed, there is in the human being a piece of flesh: if it is sound …” This is an authentic chain of transmission meeting the criteria of the two Shaykhs. Both of them narrated it in its entirety with the wording “the body” in place of “the human being.” What precedes it has been traced in Ghayat al-Maram, no. 20.

Two considerations prompted me to trace the hadith under discussion here. The first is that I found the hadith in al-Nihāyah with the wording cited here. It was mentioned under the root maḍgh, which it explained by saying: “That is, the heart, because it is a piece of flesh from the body.”