It may nevertheless be said that it is possible that Abū Burdah ibn Abū Mūsā stood between Saʿīd and Abū Mūsā, for Saʿīd served as Abū Burdah’s scribe while the latter was judge of Kūfah. And Allah knows best.
In any case, the hadith is authentic, for it has a corroborating report from Abū Hurayrah, attributed to the Prophet, to the same effect. Its wording and documentation from Muslim and others, through two chains from him, have already been given under no. 157.
I would add here that Abū ʿAwānah also transmitted it (1/104) through both chains; likewise Aḥmad (2/317 and 350), and al-Baghawī in Sharḥ al-Sunnah (1/105) through one of them.
Note: Remarkable errors have occurred concerning this hadith which are worth mentioning:
- Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr attributed it to Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, on the authority of Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī. The two al-Ḥalabīs followed him in their respective abridgements, while al-Ṣābūnī outdid his fellow townsman, stating in a footnote: “Muslim transmitted it from Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī!” Thus—following his usual practice—he gave readers the impression that the source documentation was based on his own knowledge, claiming an attainment that had not been granted to him in the first place. Then, secondly, he fell into error through ignorance, merely following someone else. He then compounded the matter by presenting the source attribution as his own, in place of Ibn Kathīr’s statement, “And in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim…”—even though al-Ṣābūnī had abridged this statement in the text as, “In the Ṣaḥīḥ.” This is what is appropriate in an abridgement; as for the footnote, it is undoubtedly a case of claiming what he had not been given, even if it had been correct. May Allah guide you!
Had he possessed scholarly expertise in hadith source documentation, his footnote would have drawn attention to this error and clarified that Muslim narrated it only from the hadith of Abū Hurayrah, as stated above.
- Conversely, al-Haythamī cited the hadith of Abū Hurayrah in al-Majmaʿ