“Saʿid ibn Abi Hilal alone narrated from him.”

Saʿid ibn Mansur also recorded the hadith in his Sunan (3/2/141/2338), saying: “ʿAbd Allah ibn Wahb informed us of it,” with the same chain of transmission and text, together with al-Tabarani’s addition. Ahmad and his son ʿAbd Allah likewise recorded it (5/451): “Harun ibn Maʿruf related to us: Ibn Wahb related to us,” with the same chain. Al-Diya al-Maqdisi also recorded it in al-Mukhtarah (58/8/1) through several routes, all of which state: “Ibn Wahb informed us of it.”

Haramlah ibn Yahya differed from all of them in its chain of transmission. He said: “Ibn Wahb related to us,” but named “Yahya ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Salim” in place of “Yahya ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman.” Ibn Hibban recorded it in his Sahih (7/58/4576): “ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Salm informed us: Haramlah ibn Yahya related to us,” with the same chain. This Ibn Salim is trustworthy.

I believe this to have been an error on Haramlah’s part. Although he was trustworthy and one of Muslim’s shaykhs, some scholars criticized him, as you may see in al-Tahdhib. This is why al-Dhahabi said in al-Kashif: “Truthful, but he reports unusual narrations.” As for Ibn Salm—the Himsi—he was a trustworthy imam and hadith scholar. Ibn Hibban declared him trustworthy, as al-Dhahabi mentioned in Siyar al-Nubalaʾ (14/306).

The annotator of al-Ihsan (10/456/4596)—whom I believe to have been someone other than Shaykh Shuʿayb, among those working under his supervision—either failed to understand this verification or chose to disregard it. He said: “Its chain of transmission is strong according to Muslim’s criteria, except for Yusuf ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Salam. The authors of the Sunan collections narrated from him, and he was a young Companion.” He then traced it through the narration of Saʿid and Ahmad, yet did not address Haramlah’s discrepancy with their narration; nor did he attribute it to al-Nasaʾi, ʿAbd Allah ibn Ahmad, or al-Tabarani.