So much for that.

What may weaken this preference is that al-Ṭabarānī also recorded the report in his al-Muʿjam al-Ṣaghīr (p. 219) through another route: Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid → al-Shaʿbī → Ayman ibn Nābil → Yaʿlā ibn Murrah, with wording similar to the one above. This would seem to favor the reading “Ibn Nābil.” Yet I suspect that here, too, the name has been corrupted from “Ibn Thābit,” for the scholars only list al-Shaʿbī among those who narrated from the latter, not from Ibn Nābil. And Allah knows best.

Concerning the ḥadīth itself, al-Haythamī said in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid (4/175): “It was transmitted by Aḥmad and by al-Ṭabarānī in both al-Kabīr and al-Ṣaghīr with similar wording through several chains, some of whose narrators are those of the Ṣaḥīḥ.”

241 — “No prophet before me was ever sent without it being incumbent upon him to direct his community to the best that he knew for them and to warn them against the worst that he knew for them. As for this nation of yours, its well-being has been placed at its beginning, while its latter part will be struck by tribulation and affairs you will condemn. A trial will come, each one making the previous seem mild; a trial will come and the believer will say, ‘This is my ruin,’ then it will pass; another trial will come and the believer will say, ‘This, this is it!’ So whoever wishes to be kept away from the Fire and admitted into Paradise, let death come to him while he believes in Allah and the Last Day—”