Al-Haythami said (10/70):

“Al-Bazzar narrated it, and it contains Layth ibn Abi Sulaym, who practised concealment in transmission; the rest of its narrators are narrators of the Sahih.”

This is one of his recurring errors: he charges Layth with concealment in transmission, whereas his actual flaw was that he became confused in his later years. This has been pointed out repeatedly before. Stranger still is that Shaykh al-A‘zami endorses him in all of this.

Sufyan al-Thawri, however, differed from Layth and narrated it from Ibn Mas‘ud as a report attributed to the Companion. Ibn Abi Shaybah said in al-Musannaf (15/102/19225): Waki‘ narrated to us from Sufyan, from Abu Qays, from Huzayl, who said: ‘Abd Allah said:

“You are the people who most resemble the Children of Israel in demeanor and conduct. You will surely follow their path, feather for feather and sandal for sandal.” ‘Abd Allah then said: “Indeed, some eloquence is sorcery.”

I say: Its chain of transmission is authentic and it is attributed to the Companion, but it has the effective status of a report attributed to the Prophet, since it concerns matters of the unseen that cannot be stated on the basis of independent legal reasoning or personal opinion. This is further supported by the fact that the saying, “Indeed, some eloquence is sorcery,” is authentically attributed to the Prophet from a number of Companions, such as Ibn ‘Umar and others. Its documentation has preceded under nos. 1731 and 2851.

Ibn Abi Shaybah then narrated from Abu al-Bakhtari, who said: Hudhayfah said:

“There will be nothing among the Children of Israel without there being its like among you.” A man asked, “Will there be the people of Lot among us?!” He replied, “Yes. What do you suppose has brought matters to that point—may you be bereft of your mother?!”

Its chain is good, were it not interrupted between Abu al-Bakhtari—whose name was Sa‘id ibn Fayruz—and Hudhayfah.