I say: There is room for scrutiny here, for Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr has been the subject of some criticism; because of that Muslim did not rely on him as an independent proof but cited him only for corroboration. Even so, his ḥadith are classified as good. As for al-Kawtharī’s statement in the introduction to Al-Tabṣīr fī al-Dīn (p. 5) that his reports are unacceptable unless supported by another chain, this is one of his familiar distortions or departures from the evidence. The settled judgment of the careful ḥadith critics who have examined the verdicts of the early imams is that his narrations are good and may be used as proof; among those who voiced this view are al-Nawawī, al-Dhahabī, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī and others.

Al-Kawtharī, in fact, only attempted to discredit this ḥadith because he imagined it contained the well-known addition, “all of them are in the Fire except one.” That assumption is false, for the addition does not appear in any of the sources I have consulted that transmit the report of Abū Hurayrah through this particular line of transmission.

Al-Suyūṭī listed the ḥadith in Al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr just as I have cited it—without the addition—yet he attributed it to the four compilers of the Sunan. This is another mistake, for al-Nasāʾī, who is one of the four, did not record it. The ḥāfiẓ has made this clear in Takhrīj al-Kashshāf (4/63), where he says: “It was narrated by the authors of the Sunan except al-Nasāʾī from the report of Abū Hurayrah, omitting the words ‘all of them …’.”

Al-Kawtharī was misled by al-Sakhāwī’s discussion of the ḥadith in Al-Maqāṣid al-Ḥasanah (p. 158), where al-Sakhāwī quoted it with the disputed addition and attributed it to the three, Ibn Ḥibbān and al-Ḥākim. Al-ʿAjlūnī, in Kashf al-Khafāʾ, followed his source Al-Maqāṣid on this point but restricted the attribution to Ibn Mājah, Ibn Ḥibbān and al-Ḥākim. All of this is error born of blind imitation and failure to return to the primary sources. Among those who fell into the same error—despite his frequent censure of such practice—was the scholar al-Shawkānī, for he cited the ḥadith with the addition in Al-Fawāʾid al-Majmūʿah and said (502): “He said in Al-Maqāṣid: ‘a good and authentic ḥadith, narrated from Abū Hurayrah, Saʿd, and Ibn ʿUmar…’”