Malik, may Allah be pleased with him, and heard him mention that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, used to say: … and then cited it. Al-Hakim said:

“Authentic according to the criteria of Muslim.”

Al-Dhahabi agreed with him.

I say: It is as the two of them said. However, Sulayman ibn Musa—the toothless Damascene—has been subject to criticism, despite being one of the eminent scholars. Al-Dhahabi described him in Siyar (5/433–437) as:

“The great imam, the mufti of Damascus.”

He then mentioned the differing views concerning him and said:

“He has some material in the introduction to Muslim.”

He was indicating that Muslim did not rely on him as proof. Hence, al-Hafiz said in al-Taqrib:

“Truthful and a jurist; there is some weakness in his hadith, and he became confused shortly before his death.”

I say: A hadith transmitted by someone like him can scarcely attain the rank of good.

Usamah ibn Zayd is close to him in this respect—he was the Medinan client of Banu Layth. Al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi said in al-Kashif:

“Muslim narrated a recension from Ibn Wahb through Usamah; most of it consists of corroborative reports, or else he pairs him with another narrator.”

Al-Hafiz al-‘Asqalani said:

“Truthful, but prone to error.”

He marked him as one from whom Muslim narrated, and from whom al-Bukhari narrated in suspended form; the same is found in the original of al-Mizzi’s Tahdhib al-Kamal. However, at the end of his biographical entry, he explicitly stated that al-Bukhari cited him as corroboration in al-Sahih, but said nothing about Muslim’s narration from him, thereby giving the impression that Muslim had relied upon him as proof. For this reason, Dr. Bashshar criticized him in his annotation on it, saying: