Thus, Abū Ḥātim’s agreement with al-Bukhārī in this biographical notice has made clear to me that his objection mentioned above does not mean that there was no second biographical notice under the name Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr ibn Ubayy. Rather, it means—Allah knows best—that there was no other narrator of the hadith of al-Jarīn besides Muḥammad ibn Ubayy ibn Kaʿb; that is, he considered him more likely to be the narrator of this hadith, rather than Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr ibn Ubayy.

This raises another difficulty: where is what Abū Ḥātim attributed to al-Bukhārī—namely, his “making one name into two names”—when his biographical notices for the two men named Muḥammad are entirely identical? This is something that has not become clear to me. “Above everyone possessing knowledge is One more knowing.”

On this occasion, I would add:

One thing I noticed in the biographical notice of Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr ibn Ubayy in the three books is that the wife of Ubayy was neither named nor identified by her kunya by al-Bukhārī or Ibn Ḥibbān (7/368). Ibn Ḥibbān therefore imagined that she was a Successor, and placed this Muḥammad—who narrated from her—in the generation of the Followers of the Successors. This is one of his mistakes—by Allah! For the woman was Umm al-Ṭufayl, as Ibn Abī Ḥātim explicitly stated in the biographical notice of this Muḥammad. She was a well-known female Companion, with a biographical entry in the works on female Companions, including Ibn Ḥibbān’s Kitāb al-Thiqāt (3/460). She has a hadith in Musnad Aḥmad (6/375–376), in the account of Subayʿah al-Aslamiyyah, stating that she may marry once she has given birth. Accordingly, Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr was a Successor.

Another point supporting this is that his narrator, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿd ibn Zurārah, was himself one of the Successors and among their reliable narrators. He narrated from some Companions and from some Successors; Ibn Ḥibbān therefore included him in both generations: the Successors and their Followers (5/375 and 7/372). If this was the status of the pupil, it would be exceedingly unlikely for his teacher to have been among the Followers of the Successors. Reflect on this.

What appears to me from this investigation—which has taken longer than I had imagined—is that it has not become clear to me