I say: Accordingly, he is unknown. The fact that three trustworthy narrators—al-Musayyab ibn Rafiʿ, Maʿbad ibn Khalid, and ʿAsim ibn Bahdalah, as stated in al-Tahdhib—narrated from him does not affect this judgment. For I say that ʿAsim is the one who narrated from the first two, and he is known to have some weakness. I therefore fear that he did not preserve its chain of transmission accurately and was inconsistent concerning it: at times he said, “from Suwaʿ,” directly, while at other times he narrated it through one of the two. The latter is more sound, since reliable narrators related it from ʿAsim in this manner, whereas the former comes through Hammad ibn Salamah from him; and his narrations from anyone other than Thabit al-Bunani are known to be open to criticism.

Secondly, the narrators of his hadith did not agree upon this addition, as mentioned above. Thirdly, it does not occur in the hadiths of al-Baraʾ and Hudhayfah. And Allah knows best.

As for al-Hafiz, he contradicted himself. In al-Fath (11/115), after mentioning the hadith through Abu Ishaq from al-Baraʾ, he said: “Its chain is authentic. Al-Nasaʾi also recorded it through an authentic chain from Hafsah, adding: ‘And he says this three times.’”

I say: The contradiction lies in the fact that he knew that this Abu Ishaq practised concealment in transmission and was well known for it, as he himself stated in Tabaqat al-Mudallisin. He placed him in the third tier: those who frequently practised concealment in transmission, from whose hadiths the imams relied only upon reports in which they explicitly stated that they had heard them. Among them are those whose hadiths were rejected outright, and those whose hadiths were accepted, such as Abu al-Zubayr al-Makki. If this is the case, then how can he declare its chain authentic when he transmitted it using an ambiguous “from” formula? Moreover, other reliable narrators—including Shuʿbah—inserted an intermediary between Abu Ishaq and al-Baraʾ. Had he declared its chain authentic on the basis of Shuʿbah’s narration from him, he would have been correct, for the reasons already explained.

The same applies to his declaring the chain of Hafsah’s hadith authentic, including the addition, while knowing that it contains Suwaʿ al-Khuzaʿi, concerning whom he said in al-Taqrib: