—among both the earlier and later hadith masters.

As for al-Haythami’s statement (3/38)—after citing it in al-Bazzar’s wording, which is substantially like that mentioned above:

“Al-Bazzar and al-Tabarani in al-Awsat narrated it, and al-Tabarani’s narrators are reliable.”

—it is subject to criticism on several grounds:

First: he unreservedly declared this Mu’ammal reliable, which is not sound for the reasons mentioned above. Indeed, this is not even his usual practice. He generally reports the differing evaluations concerning him; if he mentions that someone declared him reliable, he follows it by saying, “The majority deemed him weak,” or he mentions those who disagreed with that assessment. A number of his statements—or some of them—on this matter may be found in volume three of the index compiled by our virtuous brother Abu Hajir to Majma’ al-Zawa’id (3/404–405).

Second: his declaring al-Tabarani’s narrators reliable, but not al-Bazzar’s, strongly suggests that al-Bazzar’s chain of transmission is unworthy of being deemed reliable. In fact, the opposite is entirely true. Perhaps the reason is that al-Bazzar cited it through two chains from Humayd: the first contains a point of criticism, as will follow, whereas the other does not; but he failed to notice this. Al-Bazzar said (1/392/832):

“Muhammad (!) ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Mufaddal (!) al-Harrani narrated to us: ‘Uthman ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman narrated to us: ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Thabit ibn Thawban narrated to us, from Humayd, from Anas, from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. And in another chain, Ahmad ibn Bakkar al-Bahili narrated to us: al-Mu‘tamir ibn Sulayman narrated to us: Humayd al-Tawil narrated to us … etc.”

I say: The narrators of this second chain are reliable. As for Humayd and al-Mu‘tamir, they are well-known narrators of the Two Shaykhs.

As for Ahmad ibn Bakkar al-Bahili, Ibn Hibban mentioned him in al-Thiqat (8/23) and said: “His hadith is sound.”