“Its chain of transmission is authentic.” Al-Dhahabī agreed with him. Al-Baghawī said: “A good, singular hadith.”

I say: All its narrators are trustworthy and among the narrators of the two Sahihs, if Sayyār is Abu al-Ḥakam, as al-Baghawī has it. It has also been said that he was Sayyār Abu Ḥamzah, who was deemed trustworthy by Ibn Ḥibbān, and a number of trustworthy narrators reported from him; thus, the hadith is authentic in either case. They differed over the specification of his name in three ways:

First: “Sayyār,” without a teknonym, as in the aforementioned source citations.

Second: “Sayyār Abu al-Ḥakam.” It was also recorded by al-Ṭabarī (1/11/11) and Abū Yaʿlā (3/1308) through Muḥammad ibn Bishr al-ʿAbdī; by Aḥmad (1/389 and 442) through Wakīʿ; at (1/407) through Abū Aḥmad al-Zubayrī; and by al-Ṭabarānī in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (10/15/9785)—from whom Abū Nuʿaym narrated it in al-Ḥilyah (8/314)—through Abū Nuʿaym. All of them narrated from Bashīr ibn Salmān, from Sayyār Abu al-Ḥakam, from Ṭāriq, with the same wording.

Third: “Sayyār Abu Ḥamzah.” Abū Dāwūd (1645) recorded it through Ibn al-Mubārak, from Bashīr ibn Salmān, from Sayyār Abu Ḥamzah, with the same wording. Sufyān al-Thawrī likewise narrated it from Bashīr. Aḥmad (1/442) recorded it, and al-Dūlābī (1/98) narrated it through him: “ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us: Sufyān informed us of it.” Aḥmad said immediately afterward: “This is correct: Sayyār Abu Ḥamzah—[and not Sayyār Abu al-Ḥakam]. Sayyār Abu al-Ḥakam did not narrate anything from Ṭāriq ibn Shihāb.” The same appears in his book al-ʿIlal (1/97), and the addition is taken from it.