I say: Its chain of transmission is authentic. Al-Ashʿath is Ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥuddānī al-Baṣrī.

Abū Salamah also corroborated Ibn Sīrīn, from Abū Hurayrah:

The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, saw a mouse and said:

“Jinnah; I know of none except [that it is] from the Jews!”

Ibn ʿAdī transmitted it in al-Kāmil (5/1702) with this wording, and al-Ṭaḥāwī likewise, with the wording: “Ḥinnah, and I know nothing to be ḥinnan except from the Jews.”

Both transmitted it by way of ʿUmar ibn ʿAlī, from Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah, from him.

This ʿUmar was al-Muqaddamī, and he practised remarkable concealment in transmission.

In al-Kāmil, “jinnah” is with a jīm; its edition is extremely poor. In al-Mushkil, it is “ḥinnah,” with an undotted ḥāʾ, and I have not been able to determine its meaning. This word is also absent from some of the photographed copies of al-Kāmil held at the Islamic University.

A benefit: The apparent meaning is that this hadith represented his own view, peace and blessings be upon him, before Allah Most High informed him that He had not granted progeny to those transformed. This has preceded in the hadith of Ibn Masʿūd, may Allah be pleased with him, attributed to the Prophet, with the wording:

“Indeed, Allah does not transform anything and then leave it offspring or progeny...”

The referencing of it has previously appeared under hadith 2264.

By this, al-Ṭaḥāwī and other scholars reconciled the two hadiths. *