trustworthy. Although Ibn Abi Thabit practised tadlīs, he explicitly stated that he heard it in the forthcoming narration of Shuʿbah from him. Dharr is Ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Muharibi.

Ibn al-Sunni (293) also narrated it through this chain by another route from Ishaq, except that he did not mention Dharr in its chain of transmission. I do not know whether this was the doing of the copyist or the printer, or whether this is how the narration came to him. For he narrated it from his shaykh, Muhammad ibn ʿAli ibn Bahr, from Ishaq. Al-Khatib included a biographical notice on Ibn Bahr and said that he died in 299 AH, but mentioned neither criticism nor accreditation concerning him. If he was the one who omitted him, this indicates that he had not preserved it accurately. Thus, in any case, his narration is anomalous—indeed, rejected.

This is further confirmed by the fact that more than one narrator corroborated Ishaq in mentioning Dharr in the chain of transmission:

1. ʿAyyash ibn al-Walid al-Raqqam—who was trustworthy and one of al-Bukhari’s teachers—from Ibn Fudayl, through the same chain. Al-Nasaʾi recorded it (251/934).

2. Muhammad ibn Yazid al-Kufi: Ibn Fudayl narrated to us through the same chain, adding: “For it is from Allah’s mercy.” ʿAbd Allah ibn Ahmad recorded it in the Musnad (5/123), saying: “My father narrated to us; Muhammad ibn Yazid al-Kufi narrated to us...”

I say: This is how it appears there: “My father narrated to us.” I think this was interpolated by one of the copyists or by the printer, and that the hadith is ʿAbd Allah’s narration from Muhammad ibn Yazid, thus belonging to his additions to his father’s Musnad. I then found that Ibn Kathir attributed it to him in Jāmiʿ al-Masānīd (1/115/86), as did al-Hafiz in Aṭrāf al-Musnad (1/215/53), and likewise al-Suyuti in al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabir.