Ṣafwān was Ibn ʿAmr al-Saksakī of Ḥimṣ, one of Muslim’s narrators.
Abū al-Mughīrah was ʿAbd al-Quddūs ibn al-Ḥajjāj al-Khawlānī of Ḥimṣ, one of the narrators of both al-Bukhārī and Muslim.
- As for the mursal report of Ḥarīz ibn ʿUthmān, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿArafah said in his Juzʾ (66): Shabābah ibn Sawwār narrated to us from Ḥarīz ibn ʿUthmān that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, supplicated… the hadith. Through al-Ḥasan’s route, Ibn ʿAsākir transmitted it (16/684).
This too is an authentic mursal Syrian chain of transmission, for al-Ḥasan ibn ʿArafah was trustworthy and among the teachers of al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah.
Shabābah ibn Sawwār was a trustworthy, precise memorizer and one of the narrators of both al-Bukhārī and Muslim.
Ḥarīz ibn ʿUthmān was al-Raḥabī of Ḥimṣ. He was trustworthy and one of al-Bukhārī’s narrators; however, he hated ʿAlī—may Allah hate him! For this reason, Ibn Ḥibbān included him in al-Ḍuʿafāʾ (1/268–269) and said in his Ṣaḥīḥ—after citing the hadith of ʿUqbah ibn ʿĀmir concerning the testimony of faith after minor ablution through two routes from him, one of them being from Abū ʿUthmān, from Jubayr ibn Nufayr, from ʿUqbah (3/325–328/1050, al-Muʾassasah edition):
“This Abū ʿUthmān appears to have been Ḥarīz ibn ʿUthmān al-Raḥabī. We relied only upon this latter chain of transmission, because Ḥarīz ibn ʿUthmān is of no account in hadith!”
I consider Ibn Ḥibbān’s stance toward Ḥarīz—despite the remarkably numerous, near-unanimous statements of the leading scholars declaring him trustworthy, something seldom seen even with many well-known trustworthy narrators, while some of them also described him as having the hatred mentioned above—to be manifestly excessive. It is based on the view which he