Nor did he attribute it here to Muslim; rather, in documenting its source, he merely referred back to the first location. He ought to have mentioned this there as a matter of scholarly trust. He did not do so only lest some ignorant people falsely criticize him by claiming that he had declared a hadith in Muslim defective! The outcome, however, was that he was rightly criticized! *
- “I am holding you back by your waistbands from the Fire, saying: Beware of Hell! Beware of the prescribed punishments! When I die, I shall go ahead of you, and your appointed meeting-place will be at the Pond. Whoever reaches it will prosper.
“Then people will come and be led away toward the left, and I shall say: ‘My Lord, my community!’ It will be said: ‘You do not know what they introduced after you, turning back on their heels as apostates.’”
Al-Tabarani recorded it in al-Mu'jam al-Kabir (12/71/12508): Ja'far ibn Ahmad al-Shami al-Kufi narrated to us: Abu Kurayb narrated to us: Mukhtar ibn Ghassan narrated to us, from Abu Mihyah Yahya ibn Ya'la, from his father, from Abd al-Malik ibn Sa'id ibn Jubayr, from his father, from Ibn Abbas, from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, who said … and he cited it.
I say: This chain of transmission is acceptable as corroborative evidence, and it contains the following:
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Ya'la—namely, Ibn Harmalah al-Taymi, Yahya’s father—was not declared trustworthy by anyone other than Ibn Hibban (5/556), and no one besides his son narrated from him.
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Mukhtar ibn Ghassan was not declared trustworthy by anyone. Al-Tahdhib mentions two other narrators from him: Ibrahim ibn Isma'il al-Talhi and Ahmad ibn Ali al-Asadi; I have not been able to identify either of them.
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Ja'far ibn Ahmad al-Shami al-Kufi: I have found no biographical entry for him, nor is he among al-Tabarani’s well-known teachers. Indeed, al-Tabarani narrated from him only four hadiths in al-Mu'jam al-Awsat (1/192/1), numbered 3511–3514; one of them also appears in al-Mu'jam al-Saghir (p. 65, Indian edition), no. 63 of al-Rawd al-Nadir.