“He was born in 185.” He died in 235 AH. Every narrator above him in the chain is among those relied upon by both al-Bukhārī and Muslim.

Abū Khālid also corroborated al-Faḍl ibn Mūsā. Al-Dāraquṭnī recorded it in his Sunan (1/300/12), and Ibn Abī Ḥātim cited it, suspended, in al-ʿIlal (Hidden Defects) (1/135/374), through Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣalt: “Abū Khālid narrated it to us,” with the same report. In Naṣb al-Rāyah (1/320), al-Zaylaʿī related from al-Dāraquṭnī that he said: “All the narrators in its chain are trustworthy.”

I say: This Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣalt is Abū Jaʿfar al-Kūfī al-Aṣamm, unquestionably trustworthy and one of al-Bukhārī’s teachers. Were it not for the weakness of the one who narrated from him—al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Aswad al-ʿIjlī—in al-Dāraquṭnī’s version, I would have judged its chain strong. Perhaps this was what led Abū Ḥātim to say after the hadith: “This is a lie with no basis. There is nothing objectionable about Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣalt; I wrote down hadith from him.” Elsewhere, as narrated from him by his son in al-Jarḥ (2/1/56), he said of him: “Truthful.”

Yet I cannot see why he declared the hadith a lie when its chain is free of any liar. I am aware that, just as a liar may speak the truth—as in the well-known hadith—so too a truthful narrator may lie, as in the hadith of Abū al-Sanābil; that is, he may mistakenly say something false and contrary to reality. But, by Allah, I do not know—and I do not think I shall ever be able to know—how it can be said of a hadith narrated by a truthful person that it is “a lie with no basis,” when there is nothing objectionable in its text