As for his discrepancy in wording, it is that he omitted the particle “not,” thereby affirming what the two trustworthy narrators had negated in their respective reports from Muʿadh ibn Muʿadh.

As for his discrepancy in the chain of transmission, he said: “Ashʿath ibn Sawwar,” in place of “Ashʿath ibn ʿAbd al-Malik”! Had this al-Habbab been trustworthy, his wording would have been anomalous; but I consider it rejected, because he is not known as a transmitter. In al-Ihsan, he has no report besides this hadith and another in which he is corroborated, as I have explained in al-Taysir. Ibn Sawwar is weak.

On this occasion, I must draw attention here to two important matters:

The first is that al-Haythami, in al-Mawarid, conflated the first, authentic wording with this latter, rejected one, and failed to distinguish between them as he should have. For after citing this with its chain of transmission—as previously indicated—he followed it with the chain of al-Qawariri, which I cited above. Yet he did not cite its authentic wording; rather, he merely said:

“He then mentioned something similar.”

This gave the impression that it was similar in meaning, since that is the recognized sense in hadith terminology—and indeed in the language as well. For no one understands from the expression “something similar” that it means its opposite in meaning, as is plainly the case here. This is a gross error; I do not know how it occurred!

It also gave another false impression: namely, that al-Qawariri’s report contains “al-Ashʿath ibn Sawwar,” whereas it contains only “al-Ashʿath,” without attribution. In the reports of some trustworthy narrators, he is identified as Ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, as has preceded and will follow.