I say: This is a chain of transmission whose narrators are reliable and are narrators of the two Ṣaḥīḥs, apart from al-ʿAyzar, who is among Muslim’s narrators alone. Were it not for the fact that Abu Ishaq had become confused in his later years and, moreover, practised tadlīs, while transmitting it with an ambiguous “from,” I would have definitively declared it authentic. However, he has been corroborated, as will follow; thus, it is authentic. His name was ʿAmr ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Subayʿi.

Abu Dawud also narrated it (4999) through Hajjaj ibn Muhammad: Yunus ibn Abi Ishaq narrated to us from Abu Ishaq, with similar wording, adding at its end: “The Prophet said: ‘We have done so; we have done so.’”

I say: Its narrators are also reliable. However, Hajjaj ibn Muhammad—al-Aʿwar al-Maṣṣīṣī—had become confused in the final period of his life, when he came to Baghdad shortly before his death, as al-Hafiz stated in al-Taqrib. I therefore say that I fear this may have been among what he narrated in Baghdad, for it is transmitted from him by Yahya ibn Maʿin, and Yahya was a Baghdadi. Yet it is possible that he heard it from him before his confusion, for it has been said that he wrote approximately fifty thousand hadiths from him.

I said only, “I fear,” because two reliable narrators, who concurred with one another, differed with him concerning its chain of transmission. One of them was ʿAmr ibn Muhammad al-ʿAnqazi, who said: “Yunus ibn Abi Ishaq informed us from ʿAyzar ibn Hurayth,” reporting it. He did not mention Abu Ishaq in it. Al-Nasaʾi narrated it in al-Sunan al-Kubra (5/365/9155): “ʿAbdah ibn ʿAbd al-Rahim al-Marwazi informed me; he said: ʿAmr informed us …” This al-Marwazi was declared reliable by al-Nasaʾi and others, so the chain is authentic.

The other was Abu Nuʿaym al-Fadl ibn Dukayn. Ahmad said (4/275): “Abu Nuʿaym narrated to us: Yunus narrated to us,” in abbreviated form, and it contains: