his commentary on al-Ihsan (4/95, al-Mu’assasah edition). There he stated definitively that its chain of transmission is authentic through both routes from Abdullah ibn Ukaym. He was correct, but he ought to have noted his retraction of his earlier criticism of it as inconsistent; for that conflicts with the definitive statement just mentioned.

Nevertheless, some say that the annotation to al-Ihsan is not by the commentator on al-Sharh, but rather by one of his employees. If this is true, it explains why the earlier error was not pointed out: the one responsible for the annotation to al-Ihsan was not the same person.

The second matter: It was mentioned earlier in the documentation of the hadith that it is narrated by al-Qasim ibn Mukhaymirah from Abdullah ibn Ukaym. This is how it appears in al-Bukhari’s narration from Hisham, and in the narrations of others through Hisham’s corroborating narrators. Yet Ibn Hibban records it as: “From al-Qasim ibn Mukhaymirah, from al-Hakam, from Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Layla, from Abdullah ibn Ukaym,” thus inserting al-Hakam and Ibn Abi Layla between al-Qasim and Ibn Ukaym. I believe this addition to be an error by one of the copyists, because it contradicts the narrations of al-Bukhari and the others, and because those who wrote the biographical notices of al-Qasim and al-Hakam—namely, Ibn Utaybah—did not mention that al-Qasim narrated from him. It appears to be an old error, for al-Zayla‘i attributed it in Nasb al-Rayah (1/120) to Ibn Hibban in this very form! This makes it unlikely that it was a printing error, especially since the same error appears in the Mu’assasat al-Risalah edition (4/95), which is far more accurate than the Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah edition that we cite because it is complete. I do not know why the Foundation has not hastened to complete its edition (1)!

A third point: The hadith, in both its wordings, has been omitted from Zawa’id Ibn Hibban (p. 61), and should therefore be added to it. I am in the process of collecting many similar examples, Allah willing.

With that said, perhaps it will benefit the esteemed readers if I mention that such authentication on account of supporting evidence, after that declaration of weakness in itself