“When the day of Khaybar came, Abu Bakr took the banner, then ʿUmar, but victory was not granted to either of them; and Maḥmūd ibn Maslamah was killed.”

Ahmad also relates it through Zayd ibn al-Ḥubāb, from al-Ḥusayn, in similar wording.

I say: This additional detail—“and Maḥmūd ibn Maslamah was killed”—does not occur in Ahmad’s version.

And Allah knows best. *

3245—(“The wicked one spoke the truth”—that is, the jinn—in his statement: “Ayat al-Kursi (the Verse of the Throne) protects human beings from the jinn.”)

It was recorded by al-Nasāʾī in The Deeds of Day and Night (533/960), Ibn Ḥibbān (1724), al-Ḥārith in his Zawāʾid (Supplementary Narrations) (folio 125/2), Abū al-Shaykh in The Divine Greatness (5/1650), Abū Nuʿaym in Proofs of Prophethood (p. 525), as well as al-Bayhaqī in Proofs (7/108–109), and al-Baghawī in Explanation of the Sunnah (4/462–463), through several routes from al-Awzāʿī, who said: Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr narrated to us; Ibn Ubayy narrated to me that his father informed him:

They had a storehouse containing dates, which my father used to inspect. He found that its contents were diminishing, so he stood guard over it. Then there was a creature resembling a boy who had reached puberty. He said: “I greeted it with peace, and it returned the greeting. I asked, ‘Who are you: a jinn or a human being?’ It replied, ‘A jinn.’ He said, ‘Give me your hand.’ So it gave him its hand, and it was a dog’s paw, with a dog’s fur. He asked, ‘Are the jinn created like this?’ It replied, ‘The jinn well know that none among them is stronger than I am.’ My father asked it, ‘What led you to do what you have done?’ It replied, ‘We heard that you are a man who loves charity, so we wished to take a share of your food.’ My father asked, ‘Then what will protect us from you?’ It replied, ‘This verse: Ayat al-Kursi.’ Then, the following morning, he went to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and informed him. He said: ... and then cited it.

I say: This is a chain of transmission with a continuous chain, in which every narrator explicitly states having heard it; all its narrators are trustworthy, except Ibn Ubayy ibn Kaʿb. Ubayy had three sons: Muḥammad and al-Ṭufayl—by whom he was known through his kunyah—