Note: Through the route of Isma'il, al-Bukhari, Muslim, and others add:

“I also complained to him that I could not remain firm on horseback, so he struck my chest with his hand and said: ‘O Allah, make him steadfast, and make him one who guides others and is rightly guided.’”

This addition is also recorded by al-Nasa'i and Ibn Majah.

Another note: In his source-documentation of al-Adab al-Mufrad, Professor Muhammad Fu'ad Abd al-Baqi attributed the hadith under this heading to al-Bukhari and Muslim, specifying the number of the book and chapter in each of them! The commentator did likewise (1/350), and went further by attributing it to al-Tirmidhi in the Book of Virtues, Abu Dawud in the Book of Jihad, and Ibn Majah in the Book of the Sunnah. Yet none of these contains the hadith under this heading; rather, they contain only the aforementioned statement of Ibn Jarir. Clearly, this does not justify an attribution that gives a misleading impression contrary to the facts.

His attribution to Abu Dawud is even more egregiously mistaken, for Abu Dawud did not narrate that statement either! Rather, he narrated from him another hadith, which al-Bukhari and Muslim also recorded; it appears in my Sahih Abi Dawud (2477).

Perhaps such a mistaken impression was the reason the hadith master al-Haythami did not include this hadith in his Mawarid al-Zam'an ila Zawa'id Ibn Hibban, thinking that it was in the two Sahihs. Strangely, the hadith master did not draw attention to it in the margin of the book, as he sometimes does. I therefore supplied it in my own copy of al-Mawarid, along with many other hadiths that I similarly supplied, in preparation for publishing it as part of my major project, Taqrib al-Sunnah Bayna Yaday al-Ummah (“Bringing the Sunnah before the Ummah”). I hope to complete it soon, if Allah Most High wills. *