‘Awanah, Abu Nu‘aym, and others—let alone the compilers of the Sunan collections, especially al-Tirmidhi, who declared them authentic whenever the chain to him was sound. I will provide readers with examples of Simak’s narrations from Jabir ibn Samurah, attributed to the Prophet: Muslim narrated from him nearly forty hadiths; al-Tirmidhi narrated some of these, along with other hadiths from him, authenticating eight of them and grading six as good (1).

As was his custom, al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar succinctly summarized the hadith masters’ assessments of him, saying:

“Truthful. His narrations from ‘Ikrimah in particular are inconsistent, and he changed in his later years, so that he would sometimes be prompted.”

Thus, the verifying hadith masters, both early and later, agreed that his hadith is accepted when he narrates from anyone other than ‘Ikrimah, and on the distinction previously related from Ibn Shaybah. Since Shu‘bah is one of the narrators from him in the hadith under discussion, the hadith is authentic, with no difficulty in it.

This is so if, in his aforementioned view, the man is casting aspersions on the hadith’s authenticity because it is narrated by Simak.

But if by that view he means to identify a defect in the hadith because it is narrated by ‘Alqamah ibn Wa’il from his father, then it is stated in al-Tahdhib:

“Al-‘Askari related from Ibn Ma‘in that he said: ‘Alqamah ibn Wa’il from his father is mursal (a report with a missing link).’”

The reply is from two angles:

First, it cannot be accepted that this is established from Ibn Ma‘in, because the narrator between him and al-‘Askari is unknown—he was, I believe, Abu Ahmad al-Hasan ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Himsi, who died in 382 AH—whereas Ibn Ma‘in died in 233 AH. Thus, nearly a century and a half separates them.