(1003), Aḥmad (2/3 and 95), Abū Yaʿlā (3/1365 and 1364), al-Ṭabarānī in al-Kabīr (13440), and al-Baghawī in Sharḥ al-Sunnah (7/129/1916), through various routes, some of which add to others, all from Ibn al-Sāʾib with this report. Al-Tirmidhī said: “This is a good hadith. Ḥammād ibn Zayd narrated something similar from ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, from Ibn ʿUbayd ibn ʿUmayr, from Ibn ʿUmar, but did not mention ‘from his father.’”

I say: Al-Nasāʾī (2/36) and al-Ṭabarānī (13447) recorded it with a connected chain, through two routes from Ḥammād, with no mention of the father. This is perhaps the correct version, for Ḥammād ibn Zayd heard from ʿAṭāʾ before his memory became impaired. Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah—who likewise heard from him before that impairment—corroborated this in another report recorded by Imam Aḥmad (2/11). Perhaps this is why al-Bukhārī said: “He heard nothing from his father and does not mention him.”

This is not contradicted by the fact that ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated it in al-Muṣannaf (5/29/8877), from Maʿmar and al-Thawrī, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, who said: “from his father.” It is possible that the wording of the chain belongs to Maʿmar, who heard from him after his memory became impaired, unlike al-Thawrī. Thus, ʿAbd al-Razzāq—or the transmitter of his book—may have conflated al-Thawrī’s narration with Maʿmar’s narration. And Allah knows best.

One indication of the commentator’s inattentiveness is that he declared the text in question in Aḥmad defective on account of Ibn al-Sāʾib’s memory impairment, whereas it is narrated there through Ibn ʿUyaynah, as has preceded. Even if it had escaped him that Ibn ʿUyaynah heard from him before that impairment, how could it also have escaped him that al-Thawrī narrated from him before it, when his narration is plainly before him in the book?

Then I found this narration of al-Thawrī in Ibn Ḥibbān (1000), through Maḥmūd ibn Ghaylān: ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us: Sufyān informed us of it, like the narration of Maʿmar. It therefore appears that ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUbayd would sometimes mention his father in the chain of transmission. And Allah knows best.