As for Ibn Hibban, he included him in al-Thiqat; while al-Hafiz said: “His hadith are weak.”

I say: al-Hasan here is al-Basri, who practised tadlis, and he narrated it using an ambiguous “from” formula. However, Ahmad (4/436) transmitted it through Sharik ibn Abd Allah, from Mansur, from Khaythamah, from al-Hasan, who said:

“I was walking with Imran ibn Husayn, each of us holding the other’s hand, when we passed by a beggar reciting the Quran ...” The hadith then continues in similar wording.

I say: this Sharik is the judge, and he had poor retention; thus, he cannot be relied upon as proof, especially given his contradiction of Sufyan’s narration. Al-Tirmidhi declared this hadith good, despite the weakness of its chain of transmission, only because of its numerous supporting narrations. This was his stated terminology, as he explicitly explained in al-Ilal at the end of the Sunan, saying (4/400):

“Whenever we mention in this book that a hadith is good, we mean that its chain is good according to us: every hadith that is narrated, whose chain contains no one accused of lying, that is not anomalous, and that is narrated through more than one route in similar wording—such, in our view, is a good hadith.”

Strangely, this statement of al-Tirmidhi escaped al-Hafiz Ibn Kathir. For when he mentioned it from Ibn al-Salah in Mukhtasar Ulum al-Hadith, he remarked upon it, saying (p. 40):

“If it has been transmitted from al-Tirmidhi that he said this, then in which of his books did he say it?!”

You now know in which of his books he said it. Glory be to Him from whom nothing is hidden.

Al-Shawkani further reported (5/243) from al-Tirmidhi that, after citing the hadith, he said: “This is a good hadith; its chain is not that strong.”

But the phrase, “its chain is not that strong,” does not occur in our copy. And Allah knows best. I subsequently saw it in