And the hadith has a corroborating report narrated by Sulaym ibn ʿĀmir from Abū Umāmah, attributed to the Prophet, with similar wording. Al-Ḥākim transmitted it (2/476) and said: “Its chain of transmission is authentic.” Al-Dhahabī concurred with him. Ibn Abī al-Dunyā also transmitted it with similar wording, and al-Mundhirī graded its chain good in al-Targhīb wa-al-Tarhīb (4/260).

Note: A portion of the hadith has been omitted from al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr, thereby corrupting the meaning. Something similar occurs in al-Majmaʿ. The omission should therefore be supplied from the version in al-Musnad cited here.

2735 — “I enjoin upon you fear of Allah, and to listen and obey, even if he is an Abyssinian slave. Whoever among you lives after me will see much disagreement. So adhere to my sunnah and the sunnah of the rightly guided caliphs after me; hold fast to it with your molar teeth. [And beware of newly introduced matters, for every newly introduced matter is a blameworthy innovation, and every blameworthy innovation is misguidance.]”

Al-Ṭabarānī transmitted it in Musnad al-Shāmiyyīn (p. 136) through two routes, and in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (18/248/623) through one of them: from Arṭāh ibn al-Mundhir, from al-Muhāṣir ibn Ḥabīb, from al-ʿIrbāḍ ibn Sāriyah, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, delivered to us, after the dawn prayer, a most eloquent admonition that caused eyes to shed tears and hearts to tremble. A man among his Companions said: “O Messenger of Allah, this is like the admonition of one bidding farewell.” He then mentioned the above.

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission; all its narrators are trustworthy, as I have shown in Ẓilāl al-Jannah (nos. 28 and 29), in my source documentation of Kitāb al-Sunnah by Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim. The additional wording is from him. He, the compilers of the Sunan collections, and others have transmitted it through numerous routes from al-ʿIrbāḍ, may Allah be pleased with him. See them in al-Ẓilāl (26–34 and 1037–1045) and Musnad al-Shāmiyyīn (pp. 237, 276, and 403). I have chosen to document this route here only because of its rarity, whereas those others are well known; some of them are found in al-Shāmiyyīn (p. 154).