I then found another supporting report for the hadith, a mursal narration, worded as follows:

“When the believing servant dies, the souls of the believers receive his soul and ask him, ‘What became of so-and-so?’ If he replies, ‘He has died,’ they say, ‘He has been taken to his mother, the Abyss. What an evil mother, and what an evil nurse!’”

Al-Hakim recorded it (2/533) through Mubarak ibn Fudalah, from al-Hasan, who said: The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said it; then he cited the report. He declared: “This is a mursal hadith with an authentic chain of transmission.” That is what he said. Yet Ibn Fudalah practised concealment in transmission and would omit weak transmitters from between reliable ones, as stated in al-Taqrib. Thus, despite its being mursal, its chain of transmission is not authentic.

Al-Ash'ath ibn Abdullah al-A'ma—one of the narrators from al-Hasan al-Basri—reported it with a double break and stopped it at himself, saying: “When the believer dies...” and then relating something similar. Ibn Jarir recorded it (30/182): Ibn Abd al-A'la narrated to us; Ibn Thawr narrated to us; from Ma'mar; from him. I say: The narrators in this chain are trustworthy, but it is a report attributed to a Successor, stopping at this Ash'ath.

Note: One example of Shaykh al-Sabuni’s pretentiousness in his book, Mukhtasar Tafsir Ibn Kathir—a matter of which I had pointed out something in the introduction to the fourth volume of al-Sahihah—is that he cited this hadith in his abridgment (3/670), saying: “Ibn Jarir related...” following the wording of the original work. He then repeated this in the footnote, saying: “Ibn Jarir recorded it!” Is this repetition in the text and the footnote an abridgment, or rather needless prolixity? The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, spoke the truth when he said: “Whoever pretends to possess what he has not been given is like one wearing two garments of falsehood.”

It was recorded by Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi, as well as by al-Bukhari in al-Adab al-Mufrad, from Jabir; and by Ahmad from Aishah. Each of the two strengthens the other. I have discussed their chains of transmission in al-Ta'liq al-Raghib (2/55–56).