Al-Dāraquṭnī said:

“He was the most reliable of all people in narrating from Ibn Jurayj.”

All those below him in the chain are trustworthy, except for Aḥmad ibn Zakariyyā ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Abī Masarrah, for whom I have found no biographical entry in the available biographical works on narrators. However, al-Fākihī mentioned in Akhbār Makkah (2/348) that he used to issue legal verdicts in Mecca, and that his son ʿAbd Allāh succeeded him in this. The latter was declared trustworthy by Ibn Ḥibbān (8/369), while Ibn Abī Ḥātim said: “His standing is that of one who is truthful.” Al-Dhahabī described him in al-Siyar (12/632) as “the imam, hadith scholar, and transmitter of hadiths with their chains.”

Abū ʿĀṣim—al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Makhlad al-Nabīl—differed from ʿAbd al-Majīd in both its chain of transmission and its text. As for the chain, he said, “Abū Masʿūd al-Zuraqī,” in place of “Masʿūd ibn al-Ḥakam al-Zuraqī.”

Abū Dāwūd (546) recorded it: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Isḥāq al-Jawharī narrated to us: Abū ʿĀṣim informed us, from Ibn Jurayj, from Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah, from Nāfiʿ ibn Jubayr, from Abū Masʿūd al-Zuraqī, from ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib …

I say: Abū Masʿūd al-Zuraqī is known only through this narration. It therefore seems to have been an error on the part of Abū ʿĀṣim, who did not retain it accurately. This may be indicated by the fact that he was inconsistent in its chain of transmission and did not settle upon it; rather, he omitted him and narrated it as mursal.

Thus, Abū Dāwūd (545) narrated it with the same chain, from Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah, from Sālim Abū al-Naḍr, who said: “When the prayer was called to commence in the mosque, if the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, saw that they were few in number, he would sit and not pray; but if he saw them as a congregation, he would pray.”