Al-Ṭabarānī—and the other version is also found in his work—said:

“No one narrated it from Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf except his son, and no one narrated it from Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd except Ibn Wahb. Ḥarmalah was alone in transmitting it.”

I say: He was trustworthy and one of Muslim’s shaykhs. Those above him in the chain are trustworthy narrators from among the men of al-Bukhārī and Muslim; thus, it is an authentic chain of transmission according to Muslim’s criteria.

Al-Ḥākim said—and al-Dhahabī followed him:

“Authentic according to the criteria of both of them”!!

Al-Dhahabī cited it in al-Siyar (1/425) without comment, while its annotator did not document it at all. Moreover, the wording “from his grandfather” was corrupted there into “from someone who narrated it to him,” thereby ruining its chain of transmission!

Al-Haythamī also confused matters in documenting this hadith. He said (9/296):

“Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ, and Aḥmad narrated it in abbreviated form. The narrators in both are narrators of the Ṣaḥīḥ collections. Al-Bazzār also narrated it with a weak chain. In one narration of Aḥmad, when the milk was brought to him, he laughed.”

The source of the confusion is that he gave the impression that it was narrated by the others—especially al-Bazzār—through a single route. That is not so, as will become clear from the following documentation:

Among those routes is what Sufyān—meaning al-Thawrī—narrated from Ḥabīb ibn Abī Thābit, from Abū al-Bakhtarī, who said: On the day of Ṣiffīn, ʿAmmār said:

“Bring me a draught of milk, for the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘The last draught you drink in this world will be a draught of milk.’”

A draught of milk was brought to him, and he drank it. Then he advanced and was killed.