The annotator of the Muʾassasah edition of al-Mawārid overlooked this fact, drawing attention to the first error but not to this one. For this reason, I included this wording in my book Ḍaʿīf Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān (27/351), and the first wording in Ṣaḥīḥ Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān (301/352); both are currently in press.

The second matter is that the annotator of al-Iḥsān mishandled its chain of transmission very badly, rendering it as follows (6/100/2330): “Abū Khalīfah informed us. He said: ‘ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muʿādh narrated to us.’ He said: ‘My father, Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh, narrated to me.’ Then: ‘Ashʿath ibn Sawwār narrated to us ...’”

See how he put “ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muʿādh” in place of “my father”—the father of Abū Khalīfah—and omitted the father’s words, “He narrated to us”! Thus, ʿUbayd Allāh became Abū Khalīfah’s shaykh, and Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh the shaykh of his son, ʿUbayd Allāh! In this way, the chain of transmission to Ashʿath ibn Sawwār came to appear authentic! This is a form of concealment in transmission for which we know no precedent, whether ancient or modern. It most closely resembles what hadith scholars call tadlīs al-shuyūkh (concealment of shaykhs). This is one of the evil consequences of entrusting a matter to those unqualified for it—to boys who have not mastered the craft of tracing hadith sources and annotation, let alone the art of determining authenticity and weakness!

Nor did the conduct of the person in question stop there; rather, he built upon it another instance of ignorance and a false accusation against the hadith master Ibn Ḥibbān. Commenting on the text of the hadith, he said:

“This is how Ibn Ḥibbān narrated it: he thereby affirmed that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) would pray in his wives’ blankets, whereas the compilers of the Sunan collections and others contradicted him, reporting that he would not pray in the blankets ...”