2746 — “He would apply kohl an odd number of times.”

Al-Bazzār recorded it in his Musnad (folio 280/2; Kashf al-Astār): Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Walīd al-Faḥḥām narrated to us; al-Waḍḍāḥ ibn Yaḥyā narrated to us; Abū al-Aḥwaṣ narrated to us, from ʿĀṣim, from Anas, who said: He then cited it as attributed to the Prophet. He said: “I know of no one who narrated it from ʿĀṣim besides Abū al-Aḥwaṣ.”

I say: Both are trustworthy narrators whose reports appear in the two Ṣaḥīḥs. Abū al-Aḥwaṣ was named Salām ibn Sulaym al-Ḥanafī al-Kūfī, and ʿĀṣim was Ibn Sulaymān al-Aḥwal. The defect in the hadith lies with al-Waḍḍāḥ ibn Yaḥyā, and this is the defect identified by al-Haythamī, who said in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid (5/96): “Al-Bazzār narrated it, and it includes Waḍḍāḥ ibn Yaḥyā, who is weak.”

Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Walīd was identified by his grandfather’s name, for he was Muḥammad ibn al-Walīd ibn Abī al-Walīd al-Faḥḥām al-Baghdādī. He was one of al-Nasāʾī’s teachers, and al-Nasāʾī said of him: “There is nothing objectionable about him.”

I say: Yet I fear that he erred in its chain of transmission, for one more trustworthy than him contradicted him in it. Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī said in Tahdhīb al-Āthār (2/99/1251): Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq related to me: Waḍḍāḥ ibn Ḥassān al-Anbārī narrated to us; Salām Abū al-Aḥwaṣ narrated to us, from ʿĀṣim ibn Sulaymān, from Ḥafṣah bint Sīrīn, from Anas ibn Mālik, with the same report. He added: “Ibn Sīrīn would apply kohl twice to each eye, and divide one additional application between the two.”

This Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq was al-Ṣanʿānī, a trustworthy and precise authority among the teachers of Muslim and the four Sunan compilers. He contradicted al-Faḥḥām in two places in the chain of transmission: