The first is that, in some transmission routes, as you have seen, he is explicitly identified as al-Wāsiṭī, whereas al-Nashīṭī was from Basra, not Wāsiṭ.

The second is that his shaykh in this chain of transmission, ʿAbbād ibn al-ʿAwwām, is not mentioned in al-Nashīṭī’s biographical entry, but only in that of al-Wāsiṭī.

The third is that some of those who narrated this hadith from him are likewise not mentioned in his biographical entry, but only in that of al-Wāsiṭī—for example, Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥāfiẓ, known as Jazrah.

Thus, from what we have mentioned, it is established that Saʿīd ibn Sulaymān was in fact al-Wāsiṭī. He was trustworthy, and the two Shaykhs relied upon him, as has preceded in al-Ḥākim’s statement. His reliability is agreed upon among the scholars of narrator evaluation—apart from what Imam Aḥmad said in Kitāb al-ʿIlal wa-Maʿrifat al-Rijāl (p. 140):

“He was greatly prone to textual misreadings.”

Yet this hadith contains nothing that such a trustworthy narrator could have misread, given its brevity! Its authenticity, then, ought likewise to be agreed upon. However, a different statement from Aḥmad has also been reported. In al-Muntakhab by Ibn Qudāmah (10/199/1), it states:

“Mihannā said: I asked Aḥmad about the hadith, ‘Saʿīd ibn Sulaymān narrated to us’”—I said: he then cited it with its chain of transmission—“and Aḥmad replied: ‘There is nothing at all to this. This is the hadith of Abū Hārūn from Abū Saʿīd.’”

I say: Aḥmad’s reply may be understood in one of two ways:

Either Saʿīd, in his view, was al-Wāsiṭī; in which case, there is no basis, in my view, for declaring him mistaken in attributing it through this chain, in light of his trustworthiness, as has preceded.

Or he meant that he was the weak al-Nashīṭī. But this too has no basis after it has been established that he was al-Wāsiṭī. Moreover, he was not alone in narrating it. Bishr ibn Muʿādh al-ʿAqdī narrated it to us: Abū ʿAbd Allāh—a shaykh who resided