I say: This is how it appears therein: he did not provide the chain of transmission from Ibn Jūṣā to Ibn al-Mundhir, although there are vast gaps between them. I do not know whether the omission was made by a copyist or a printer, or whether it was an abridgment by the author himself. It then occurred to me that Ibn Jūṣā may have been the one who narrated the hadith from Abū al-Yamān, for Ibn Jūṣā was one of al-Ṭabarānī’s teachers, and al-Ṭabarānī transmitted this portion of it through another of his teachers from Abū al-Yamān. He said in his al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ (1/3/33, according to my numbering):

“Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Najdah narrated to us: Abū al-Yamān narrated to us...”

with the abbreviated chain of al-Ṣughdī, with the wording:

“Do not eat while reclining, and do not step over people’s necks on Friday.”

Al-Ṭabarānī said:

“It is not narrated from Abū al-Dardāʾ except through this chain of transmission; Arṭāh alone narrated it.”

I then considered the aforementioned possibility unlikely when I learned from al-Dhahabī’s Siyar Aʿlām (15/15) that Ibn Jūṣā was born around 230 AH. He therefore could not have met Abū al-Yamān, since the latter died in 222 AH. There must, then, be an intermediary between them, as I initially stated; it may have been al-Ṣughdī or someone else. Allah knows best.

Al-Haythamī cited the hadith from al-Ṭabarānī’s narration in two places in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid. In the first place, he cited it in full, with the two passages as mentioned above, and said (2/179):

“It contains Abdullah ibn Zurayq—thus it appears, though it is actually Ruzayq. Al-Azdī said: ‘His hadith is not sound.’”

In the other place, he cited its first passage and said (5/24):

“Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Awsaṭ, and its narrators are trustworthy.”