Al-Ḥāfiẓ also endorsed this in al-Lisān.

I say: Thus, it is a good hadith; but here it has been corroborated, and is therefore authentic.

Al-Haythamī said in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid (7/331):

“Ahmad transmitted it, and its narrators are those of the Ṣaḥīḥ.”

Al-Suyūṭī attributed the hadith in al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr to Ahmad alone; however, it reads there, “the city,” in place of “mud-brick houses”—a scribal error.

Now note that its apparent meaning conflicts with what occurs in the hadith of al-Nawwās ibn Samʿān concerning Gog and Magog and Allah Most High’s destruction of them, until the earth stinks from their foul odor. It states: “Then Allah will send upon them a rain from which no house of mud-brick or hair will be sheltered; it will wash the earth until it leaves it as smooth as a mirror.” Muslim and others transmitted it, and its documentation has already preceded under nos. 481 and 1780.

Thus, the words, “nor a house of hair,” conflict with the wording in the hadith under discussion, “except a tent of hair.” Perhaps this will occur at two different times. Allah knows best.

Furthermore, this hadith is one of the many hadiths that meet the conditions of al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Haythamī’s Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān, yet are not found in it. I have rectified this omission in my two new books, Ṣaḥīḥ Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān and Ḍaʿīf Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān, which are currently in press. We ask Allah Most High to facilitate their completion. *

3267—“Indeed, the people most severely tried are the prophets; then those next in rank, then those next in rank, then those next in rank.”

Al-Nasāʾī transmitted it in al-Sunan al-Kubrā (4/355/7496 and 379–380), as did al-Ḥākim (4/404) and Ahmad (6/369); and, through Ahmad’s route, al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī in al-Tahdhīb (34/55),