265 — “Whenever he saw something he liked, he would say: ‘Praise be to Allah, by whose blessing righteous deeds are brought to completion.’ And whenever he saw something he disliked, he would say: ‘Praise be to Allah in every circumstance.’”
It was transmitted by Ibn Majah (2/422), Ibn al-Sunni (no. 372), and al-Hakim (1/499), through al-Walid ibn Muslim, who said: Zuhayr ibn Muhammad narrated to us, from Mansur ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman, from his mother Safiyyah bint Shaybah, from ʿA’ishah, who related it.
Al-Hakim said: “Its chain of transmission is authentic.”
Al-Dhahabi endorsed this without commenting on it. Yet this is open to question, for this Zuhayr ibn Muhammad—the Tamimi, originally from Khurasan and later settled in Syria—was subject to criticism.
Al-Hafiz said in al-Taqrib:
“The narrations of the Syrians from him are unsound, and he was deemed weak on account of them. Al-Bukhari reported from Ahmad: ‘It is as though the Zuhayr from whom the Syrians narrate were someone else!’ Abu Hatim said: ‘He narrated in Syria from memory and made many errors.’”
I say: This is one of the Syrians’ narrations from him, al-Walid ibn Muslim being the narrator. Moreover, he practised concealment in transmission by omission, and did not explicitly state direct transmission from the remaining narrators in the chain. This is another hidden defect.
From this, one may recognize the error in al-Hakim’s declaring it authentic, as well as the similar statement of al-Busiri in al-Zawa’id: “Its chain is authentic, and its narrators are trustworthy!” Likewise is al-Nawawi’s statement in al-Adhkar—although it was endorsed by its commentator Ibn ʿAllan (6/271): “Ibn Majah and Ibn al-Sunni transmitted it with a good chain!”
All of this overlooks the defect in the hadith through this route which we have explained.
However, I found a corroborating report for the hadith narrated from Abu Hurayrah, with the wording:
“The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, had two expressions of praise by which he was known: whenever something he disliked came to him, he would say: ‘Praise be to Allah for ...’”