both of them were relied upon in the two Ṣaḥīḥs. Nevertheless, in my view—and Allah knows best—it is not necessary to pin the error on ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Rather, Muḥammad ibn ʿAjlān is more likely to have been responsible for it, in view of the previously mentioned discrepancy in his reports. It is possible that he at times narrated it as mursal from this Alexandrian, and at other times narrated it with a connected chain through Saʿīd al-Maqburī, from his father, from Abū Hurayrah.

It has also been narrated through another route from Abū Hurayrah, but it is very weak and affords no cause for rejoicing, since it comes through Ṣilah ibn Sulaymān al-ʿAṭṭār: Ashʿath narrated to us from Ibn Sīrīn, from Abū Hurayrah, with the same report. Al-Khaṭīb recorded it in al-Tārīkh (9/336), in Ṣilah’s biographical entry, and said:

“Abū Ḥātim said: ‘He is abandoned in hadith; his narrations from Ashʿath are rejected.’”

Al-Dhahabī said in al-Mughnī:

“They abandoned him.”

Similar to this is what ʿUmar ibn Rāshid narrated from Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr, from Abū Salamah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, from Abū al-Dardāʾ: a shorter version of it.

Al-Ṭabarānī recorded it in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr. Al-Mundhirī said (2/248): “Through two chains of transmission; the better of them contains ʿUmar ibn Rāshid, while the rest of its narrators were relied upon in the Ṣaḥīḥ. There is no problem with this chain for corroboration.”

Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid (10/90) says something similar, except that it states regarding ʿUmar ibn Rāshid:

“Though weak, he has been declared trustworthy, and the rest of its narrators are narrators of the Ṣaḥīḥ.”

I say: Al-Dhahabī stated in al-Mughnī:

“They declared him weak.”