Aḥmad also recorded it (2/70 and 118), as did ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd in al-Muntakhab (2/54/855), and al-Bayhaqī through three further routes from Ḥammād ibn Salamah, but without Ḥammād’s statement: “He did not hear it …”

I say: Its narrators are trustworthy and meet Muslim’s criteria; however, it is interrupted, since Ḥammād explicitly stated that Thābit had not heard it from Ibn ʿUmar. It was on this basis that al-Haythamī deemed it defective.

Some newcomers to this field have also declared it defective on a strange basis. The annotator of al-Muntakhab said:

“Its chain consists of trustworthy narrators, but I have reservations, because of Ḥammād ibn Salamah’s confusion (!). We were unable to determine whether Yaḥyā narrated from him before or after this confusion.”

I say: There are several responses to this:

First: We know of no scholar who described him as having suffered confusion; rather, they spoke only of a change in his condition, which is not detrimental. For this reason, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ did not list him among those who suffered confusion at the end of his book Introduction to Hadith Studies; nor did al-Kayyāl in his comprehensive work on this subject, al-Kawākib al-Nayyirāt (The Luminous Stars). Muslim relied upon him in the main body of his Ṣaḥīḥ, including his previously cited hadith from Thābit, from Anas, no. 2592.

Second: Ibn ʿAdī said at the end of Thābit’s biographical entry in al-Kāmil (2/527):

“The leading scholars and trustworthy authorities wrote down hadith from him. The one who narrated most extensively from him was Ḥammād ibn Salamah. He is nothing but trustworthy and truthful, and his hadiths are sound and straightforward when transmitted from him by a trustworthy narrator. He has many hadiths and is among the trustworthy Muslims. Any objectionable feature found in his hadith is not attributable to him; rather, it is only …”