Note: Al-Haythami did not attribute this hadith to al-Bazzar. Al-Bazzar also has another hadith narrated from Ali concerning the Prophet’s—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—praising Allah when he saw something he disliked and when he saw something that pleased him. Al-Haythami did not mention it either. It has already been cited under Hadith 265 in the second critical edition.
This confirmed for me the correctness of what al-Kattani states in al-Risalah al-Mustatrafah (p. 51): namely, that al-Bazzar has two Musnad collections—the large one, annotated with discussions of defects and known as al-Bahr al-Zakhkhar, and the small one. It then occurred to me that the collection from which al-Haythami transmits is the small one. Yet this is called into question by his statement at the beginning of his book that his source is the Musnad entitled al-Bahr al-Zakhkhar. I therefore do not know whether the copies of this al-Bahr al-Zakhkhar differ, such that some contain material absent from others. For the other hadith referred to above, despite al-Haythami’s failure to mention it, does not appear in the recently printed edition of al-Bahr al-Zakhkhar. The matter thus requires further investigation.
The hadith of Abu Hurayrah referred to above was also transmitted by al-Bazzar (4/29/3118, Kashf al-Astar), except that he added at its end: “For if he says that, it constitutes gratitude for that blessing,” in place of the wording found there: “He will not be afflicted by that calamity.” This agrees with the hadith of Ibn Umar here, and it is the correct wording, since it is strongly corroborated by it. However, al-Bazzar’s chain contains his teacher Abdullah ibn Shabib, who is very weak and who contradicts the trustworthy narrators in this report, even though all their chains converge upon al-Umari, as mentioned there. Al-Bazzar then said: “It is narrated from Abu Hurayrah only through this chain, and the scholars have deemed Abdullah ibn Umar’s hadith acceptable.”
I then found it in al-Tabarani’s al-Mu'jam al-Saghir (140, Hindi edition), and also in al-Awsat