I then reconsidered and said: Yet al-Mughirah practised tadlis. For this reason, al-Dhahabi mentioned him in al-Mughni and said: “An imam and trustworthy narrator; however, Ahmad ibn Hanbal regarded only his narration from Ibrahim as weak.” I say: In that case, his hadith is good and suitable only as corroboration.

Ibn Hibban recorded the hadith in his Sahih (3/73/1622): ‘Imran ibn Musa ibn Mujashi‘ informed us: ‘Uthman ibn Abi Shaybah narrated to us,’ through the same chain, except that he said, “one hundred” instead of “one thousand.” This is anomalous, since it contradicts the previously cited narration of Ahmad and his son ‘Abd Allah on the one hand, and other hadiths reported from a number of other Companions on the other. These have been documented in al-Irwa’ (4/143–146).

Ibn Hibban also recorded it (1621), as did Abu Ya‘la in his Musnad (2/393/1165), and likewise al-Bazzar (1/215/429—Kashf al-Astar), through other routes from Jarir, with the wording, “one hundred.” However, al-Haythami did not quote its wording in al-Kashf; rather, he referred it to the wording of another route before this one, which has the wording, “one thousand,” saying: “I said: He mentioned it with similar wording.” It therefore seems that he meant that its wording was “one thousand.” This is what he explicitly stated in Majma‘ al-Zawa’id, where, after citing it with Abu Ya‘la’s wording, he said (4/6): “It was narrated by Abu Ya‘la and al-Bazzar with similar wording, except that he said: ‘Better than one thousand prayers.’ The narrators of Abu Ya‘la are the narrators of the Sahih collections.”

I say: There is no reason to single out Abu Ya‘la in this regard, for al-Bazzar’s shaykh in this chain is Yusuf