“Al-Bukhari’s statement, ‘Sayyār Abū al-Ḥakam heard from Ṭāriq ibn Shihāb,’ is an error—on his part and on the part of those who followed him. The one who narrates from Ṭāriq is Sayyār Abū Ḥamzah. Aḥmad, Yaḥyā, and others stated this.”

However, Muslim, in al-Kunā, al-Nasāʾī, al-Dūlābī, and more than one other scholar—as also recorded in al-Tahdhīb—followed al-Bukhārī in holding that he narrates from Ṭāriq. Al-Tahdhīb then commented on this: “It is an error, as al-Dāraquṭnī said.”

I say: This is a considerable disagreement among these eminent imams. Perhaps its cause is the differing reports of the transmitters in the latter two of the three previously mentioned forms. The first does not conflict with either of them, since it may be understood in accordance with either one, by applying the restricted wording to the unrestricted. Thus, the two views rest upon these two forms, and it is difficult for people such as ourselves to prefer one over the other, since there is no apparent evidence to support such a preference. Nevertheless, one is inclined to prefer the view of Imam al-Bukhārī and those with him, because the transmitters of the form supporting it are more numerous than those of the other form, as is apparent from the tracing of their sources.

I say this if the disagreement arose among the narrators from Bashīr ibn Salmān. But if it arose from Bashīr himself—as Abū Dāwūd’s preceding statement suggests: “...but Bashīr used to say, ‘Sayyār Abū al-Ḥakam,’ and that is an error”—then the matter is even more problematic. I say: If the error was Bashīr’s own, the issue is more obscure, for one may ask: What evidence is there that the error came from him, when there is no other narrator besides him who related it from Sayyār and identified him as Sayyār Abū Ḥamzah? In short, the matter still requires further research and verification in order to determine the narrator’s identity: was he this Abū Ḥamzah or Abū al-Ḥakam?