Its narrators are trustworthy, except that Ibn Ishaq practised tadlis and narrated it with an ambiguous “from.” Nevertheless, al-Qasim ibn al-‘Abbas al-Hashimi contradicted him in reporting it from ‘Abd Allah ibn Rafi‘, saying, “forerunner” in place of “predecessor.” Muslim transmitted it (7/67), where the hadith has a continuation.

Muslim and others also transmitted it from Abu Hurayrah in its entirety—and in a more complete form—including the greeting of peace upon the graves of the believers. It has been documented in al-Irwa’ (776) and Ahkam al-Jana’iz (190).

I then found Ibn Ishaq’s hadith in al-Tabarani’s al-Mu‘jam al-Kabir (23/413/996), with the wording: “I shall precede you to the Pond; then, while I am there...” —the rest of the hadith. Al-Tabarani transmitted it through Ibn Abi Shaybah with this wording. I do not know whether both this and the preceding report from Ibn Abi Shaybah have been accurately preserved, or whether one of them contains an error attributed to him. It also appears that the word “predecessor” in Ibn Ishaq’s hadith—if it is the accurately preserved wording in Ibn Abi Shaybah’s narration—is not accurately preserved in the narration of Ibn Ishaq’s teacher, ‘Abd Allah ibn Rafi‘, since al-Qasim ibn al-‘Abbas contradicted him, as mentioned above. Al-Tabarani also transmitted it (no. 661).

Further supporting this contradiction, and confirming the anomalous nature of Ibn Ishaq’s wording, is that the hadith has been narrated from a number of Companions with the wording: “I am your forerunner at the Pond.” Ibn Abi ‘Asim transmitted the narrations of many of them in al-Sunnah, through numerous chains, whose source documentation I have provided in Zilal al-Jannah (2/242–246).