in al-Ḍaʿīfah, under hadith 5540; however, it may perhaps serve as a corroborating report for the first chain.

Note: The wording “I would answer him” appears thus in Musnad Abī Yaʿlā. The copy is poor, but the same wording also occurs in al-Haythamī’s quotation from it. In his annotations to al-Taṣrīḥ bimā Tawātara fī Nuzūl al-Masīḥ (p. 245), Shaykh Abū Ghuddah claimed that this is a textual corruption and that the correct wording is: “I would most certainly answer him.” This is possible (1). And Allah knows best.

2734 — “Allah will place, in lieu of every thorn—meaning, of the talḥ tree in Paradise—something like the testicle of a castrated billy goat, containing seventy varieties of food, no one of whose colours resembles another.”

Al-Ṭabarānī transmitted it in al-Kabīr (17/130/318) and in Musnad al-Shāmiyyīn (p. 91), through Yaḥyā ibn Ḥamzah, from Thawr ibn Yazīd, from Ḥabīb ibn ʿUbayd, from ʿUtbah ibn ʿAbd al-Sulamī, who said: I was sitting with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when a Bedouin came and said, “O Messenger of Allah, I hear you mention a tree in Paradise, yet I know of no tree in this world with more thorns than it”—meaning the talḥ tree. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Indeed, Allah…”

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission. Its narrators are trustworthy and are among al-Bukhārī’s narrators, apart from Ḥabīb ibn ʿUbayd, who is among Muslim’s narrators. Al-Haythamī said (10/414): “Al-Ṭabarānī transmitted it, and its narrators are the narrators of the Ṣaḥīḥ.”