in al-Thiqāt (7:198), exactly as al-Bukhārī had mentioned him—that is, with the name reversed! Yet he did not list him among those named ʿAbd Allah, as Ibn Abī Ḥātim did, though they are one and the same person!

The other defect is Yaḥyā ibn ʿImrān, who was Yaḥyā ibn ʿUthmān ibn al-Arqam, as stated earlier in one of Abū Nuʿaym’s versions. Both al-Bukhārī and Ibn Abī Ḥātim likewise listed him this way in their respective books. Ibn Abī Ḥātim reported from his father: “An unknown Medinan shaykh.” Ibn Ḥibbān also included him in al-Thiqāt (9:253).

Once this is known, the errors of some of the hadith masters become evident. The first is al-Ḥākim’s statement: “Its chain of transmission is authentic!” Al-Dhahabī agreed with him! The second is al-Haythamī’s statement, after attributing it to Aḥmad and al-Ṭabarānī: “The narrators of al-Ṭabarānī are trustworthy!” This is because there is no difference between the narrations of al-Ṭabarānī and al-Ḥākim on the one hand, and that of Aḥmad on the other: all of their narrations revolve around ʿAṭṭāf ibn Khālid, whose weakness has already been mentioned. Moreover, their shaykh is the same in all of them: ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUthmān in Aḥmad’s narration, and, with the order reversed, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAbd Allah in the others. As has been established above, they are one and the same person, and he is unknown.

Furthermore, ʿAṭṭāf was inconsistent in his chain of transmission, inserting between himself and ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUthmān Yaḥyā ibn ʿImrān, who is unknown. There is therefore no basis for declaring its chain authentic, nor for distinguishing between Aḥmad’s chain and al-Ṭabarānī’s.

The third error is al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar’s confusion, in al-Taʿjīl, between the biographical notice of this ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUthmān and that of his father, ʿUthmān. He attributed to ʿAṭṭāf a hadith that he did not narrate, saying there (p. 228):