“I do not know whom he meant by this! They are all reliable and well known, and the chain of transmission is continuous!”

I say: It seems apparent to me that he meant either al-Bazzār’s shaykh, Ibrāhīm ibn Hāniʾ, or his shaykh’s shaykh, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb—or both of them together. Those above them are among the narrators included in al-Tahdhīb, so it is exceedingly unlikely that the status of any one of them would have been unknown to him. Even so, I find it strange that their status was unknown to him! For he was among those who arranged Ibn Ḥibbān’s al-Thiqāt alphabetically, and both men appear in his arrangement: the first in its first volume and the second in its third. One would therefore expect him to have known of them, or at least to have consulted his arrangement! So glory be to Allah! “My Lord neither errs nor forgets.”

As for Ibrāhīm ibn Hāniʾ, he was Abū Isḥāq al-Naysābūrī. Ibn Ḥibbān included him in the fourth generation of al-Thiqāt (8/83) and said:

“Reports were narrated from him by the Baghdadis. He was one of Aḥmad’s companions, who would sit with him to discuss hadith and religious matters.”

He has a good biographical notice in Tārīkh Baghdād (2/204–206), which reports that Aḥmad and al-Dāraquṭnī declared him trustworthy. He died in 265 AH.

As for his shaykh, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, he was Abū Jaʿfar al-Ḥārithī, and he too was from Baghdad. Ibn Ḥibbān likewise mentioned him in al-Thiqāt (9/83), transmitting through al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Baghawī from him, then said:

“He would at times make mistakes.”

Al-Khaṭīb also gave his biography (2/390–392), transmitting from a number of other hadith masters who narrated from him, and reported that Ṣāliḥ Jazrah declared him trustworthy. He died in 229 AH, and al-Bazzār likewise declared him trustworthy.

The hadith has other chains of transmission as well. Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Arṭāh narrated it from ʿAṭāʾ, from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said: