I say: A narrator such as him is, Allah willing, sound in hadith, since three reliable narrators reported from him. It is therefore more appropriate to locate the defect in someone above him in the chain, such as his shaykh, Abdullah ibn Sa'd al-Madani. I have found no biographical entry for him. His name does occur, however, in al-Yaman’s entry in Narrator Criticism and Accreditation as: “Abdullah ibn Abi Sa'id al-Madani.” The editor commented: “Sa'd is an error.” Yet perhaps what he deemed erroneous is in fact correct, since it agrees with what appears in the two books, Musnad Abi Ya'la and al-Mu'jam al-Awsat.

As for his shaykh’s shaykh, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, al-Bukhari mentioned him in al-Tarikh, as did Ibn Abi Hatim in his book, on the authority of Ibn al-Munkadir and his son Abd al-Wahid, without mentioning any criticism or accreditation of him. Ibn Hibban included him among the reliable narrators on the basis of their narrations from him. I say: In my view, the hidden defect in this chain lies with Abdullah. Yet the hadith has another chain and a corroborating report by which it is strengthened, Allah willing.

As for the other chain, Abd al-Razzaq said in al-Musannaf (3/337/5869): Ibn Uyaynah narrated from Asim ibn Sulayman, from Bakr ibn Abdullah al-Muzani, that a man came to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and said, “O Messenger of Allah, I saw in a dream that a man was writing the Quran, with a tree opposite him. When he came to the prostration verse in Surah Sad, the tree prostrated and said: ‘O Allah, make it a cause of gratitude for me, increase my reward through it, and remove a burden of sin from me through it.’” The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “We are more deserving than the tree.”