toward the sky and said, “Then where is Allah?!” Ibn ‘Umar then bought the shepherd and the sheep, set him free, and gave him the sheep.

Al-Tabarani recorded it in al-Mu‘jam al-Kabir (12/263/13054): Muhammad ibn Nasr al-Sa’igh narrated to us; Abu Mus‘ab narrated to us; ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Harith al-Jumahi narrated to us; Zayd ibn Aslam narrated it with the same wording.

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission. Its narrators are trustworthy and are biographed in al-Tahdhib, apart from al-Tabarani’s shaykh, Muhammad ibn Nasr al-Sa’igh. He too was trustworthy and is biographed in Tarikh Baghdad (3/318–319). He died in 297 AH.

Al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi cited this report as evidence in al-‘Uluww, mentioning it without its chain from Abu Mus‘ab al-Zuhri. In my abridgement of it (127), I had judged its chain to be good, though at that time I had not come across its connected chain. Now, however, I have found it, and all praise is due to Allah.

Al-Haythami said in Majma‘ al-Zawa’id (9/347):

“Al-Tabarani narrated it, and its narrators are the narrators of the Sahih, apart from ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Harith al-Hatibi, who is trustworthy.”

In sum, the most authentic of the preceding hadiths is the hadith of Mu‘awiyah. It is therefore no wonder that scholars—both hadith scholars and jurists—have agreed throughout the ages, without any disagreement among them, on declaring it authentic. The five who recorded it in their Sahih collections, as mentioned above, declared it authentic, as did al-Bayhaqi in al-Asma’ (422), al-Baghawi in Sharh al-Sunnah (3/239), al-Dhahabi, as will follow, and al-Hafiz in al-Fath (13/359). All of these explicitly affirmed the authenticity of both the hadith and its chain of transmission. Also included among them is everyone among the leading scholars of hadith and fiqh who has cited this hadith as evidence—