and he said: “Al-Dāraqutnī was asked about this report and answered, ‘It is transmitted by Muḥammad ibn Abī Naʿīm and al-Walīd ibn ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Agharr, from Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd, from al-Zuhrī, from ʿĀmir ibn Saʿd. Others relate it from Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd, from al-Zuhrī as a mursal report, and that is the correct view.’
I say: The version we have cited lends strength to the fully connected chain.
I further say: Zayd ibn Akhdam is a reliable ḥāfiẓ, and so is his teacher Yazīd ibn Hārūn. Their narration therefore forms a strong corroboration for Ibn Abī Naʿīm al-Wāsiṭī, bearing witness to his honesty and precision. Zayd ibn Akhdam, however, has been opposed in his isnād, for Ibn Mājah (no. 1573) recorded: ‘Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn al-Bukhtarī al-Wāsiṭī told us; Yazīd ibn Hārūn narrated to us; from Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd; from al-Zuhrī; from Sālim; from his father, who said: A Bedouin came…’—the ḥadith in full.
On the face of it this chain looks sound, which is why, in al-Zawāʾid (q 97/2), it is stated: ‘Its isnād is authentic; its narrators are trustworthy. Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl was declared reliable by Ibn Ḥibbān, al-Dāraqutnī and al-Dhahabī, and the rest of the transmitters meet the criteria of the two Shaykhs.’
I say, however, that al-Dhahabī also remarked concerning him, ‘Yet he committed a gross blunder.’ He then quoted a sound ḥadith in which the narrator had inserted the words ‘stoning on behalf of women’—an objectionable addition that none of the other reliable transmitters mention. Ibn Ḥajar concurred with al-Dhahabī on this point.
Accordingly, it seems likely that he erred in the isnād of the present ḥadith as well, saying ‘…from Sālim, from his father,’ whereas the correct chain is ‘from ʿĀmir ibn Saʿd, from his father,’ as in the narrations of Ibn Akhdam and others. Al-Haythamī, after citing it in Majmaʿ (1/117–118) through the route of Saʿd, said: ‘It was transmitted by al-Bazzār and al-Ṭabarānī in al-Kabīr, and its narrators are those of the authentic collections.’
Points of jurisprudence derived from the ḥadith: