“What could make a man wish to have been present at something from which Allah kept him absent, when he does not know how he would have behaved had he witnessed it?! By Allah, there were people before whom the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, was present, yet Allah cast them face-first into Hell because they neither responded to him nor believed him. Will you not praise Allah for bringing you forth knowing none but your Lord, believing in what your Prophet brought, having been spared the trial through others? By Allah, Allah sent the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, ...”

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission. Its narrators are trustworthy and are among Muslim’s narrators, apart from Yaʿmar ibn Bishr, who was from Marw. Al-Khaṭīb said in History of Baghdad (14/357): “He was among the leading students of ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Mubārak. Aḥmad said: ‘I do not think there was anything wrong with him.’ ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī said: ‘Trustworthy.’ Abū Rajāʾ Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdawayh said: ‘One of the trustworthy and God-fearing people of Marw.’ Al-Dāraquṭnī said: ‘Very trustworthy.’” Ibn Ḥibbān mentioned him in The Trustworthy Narrators (9/291).

I say: It seems that al-Haythamī overlooked the reliable reports we have cited concerning Yaʿmar, for he said regarding another hadith of his (5/122): “Aḥmad narrated it from his shaykh Yaʿmar ibn Bishr, and it is said that all of Aḥmad’s shaykhs are trustworthy!” Bishr ibn Muḥammad corroborated him in al-Bukhārī’s al-Adab al-Mufrad (87), as did Ḥabbān ibn Mūsā in Ibn Ḥibbān (1684—Mawārid); both said: “ʿAbd Allah informed us of it.”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr said in his exegesis of Sura al-Furqān, after attributing it to Aḥmad with its chain of transmission: “This is an authentic chain, but they did not report it.”

Note: The distinction mentioned in this hadith has a basis in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (no. 7281), in the hadith of Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allah, who said: