that he came to the Prophet while wearing two garments from among the Yemeni garments, and he said …—and he cited it. The wording is that of Ahmad, and at its end is: “He quickly went off and took them off.”

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission; all its narrators are trustworthy. The only concern is Baqiyyah’s ambiguous use of “from,” but he explicitly stated that he heard it directly in al-Bukhari, al-Bazzar, and al-Tabarani. Yahya ibn Jabir is a well-known Successor, and he explicitly stated that he heard it directly in al-Bukhari. Thus, the chain is connected and the hadith is authentic. Praise be to Allah.

This verification makes clear that al-Mundhiri’s statement concerning the hadith (3/111),

“Ahmad narrated it, and its narrators are trustworthy except for Baqiyyah,”

is a criticism specific to Musnad Ahmad, notwithstanding its vagueness in indicating the defect. Al-Haythami clarified it in his statement (5/136):

“Ahmad narrated it, and its narrators are trustworthy, except that Baqiyyah practised tadlis.”

Yet elsewhere, he made no mention of it at all, saying (9/379):

“Ahmad and al-Tabarani narrated it!” *

3019—“No servant attains the true reality of faith until he knows that what befell him could not have missed him, and that what missed him could not have befallen him.”

Al-Bazzar recorded it (1/27/1/33, Kashf al-Astar): “Amr narrated to us; Sulayman ibn Abd al-Rahman narrated to us; Sulayman ibn Utbah narrated to us, who said: I heard Yunus ibn Maysarah ibn Halbas narrating from Abu Idris, from Abu al-Darda’”—and he cited a hadith with this chain, then said: