I say: He thus attributed the discrepancy in question to Ibn Ḥibbān and cast aspersions on his accuracy, though Ibn Ḥibbān is innocent of it. Rather, it originated with al-Ḥabbāb ibn Muḥammad, the father of Abū Khalīfah, as previously explained. Nothing led him into this false accusation except his alteration of its chain of transmission without any basis in a manuscript or a transmitted version, and without the slightest indication of this in his annotation. May Allah guide him.

This alteration and manipulation of the chain of transmission also found its way into another work, namely al-Mawārid (1/168–169, Muʾassasah edition). I suspect that the person responsible is the same one, or else a blind imitator. Here, he set out what was found in the original text of al-Mawārid; yet although he categorically declared it to be an error—and on that basis emended the chain of al-Mawārid in accordance with his purported emendation in al-Iḥsān—he nevertheless stated his evidence for that emendation. After citing the chain as given in the original, he said:

“It is an error, and the correction is taken from Sunan Abū Dāwūd. See the hadith’s documentation and the annotation upon it in al-Iḥsān!”

Such were his words. Yet he did not explain the rationale behind the correction he claimed; for had he done so, he would have been exposed and his ignorance of this discipline laid bare. This is because, merely from the fact that Abū Dāwūd narrated the hadith from his shaykh, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muʿādh, he inferred that he must likewise have been a shaykh of Abū Khalīfah. This plainly does not follow. We say this even on the assumption that he was one of Abū Khalīfah’s shaykhs, for it is possible that someone else was the one who actually narrated it from Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh—such as ʿUbayd Allāh al-Qawārīrī, who occurs in the second chain in al-Mawārid, as noted above; or al-Qāsim ibn Sallām, who narrates this hadith from Muʿādh in al-Baghawī’s Sharḥ al-Sunnah (2/429/520), where the chain reads: “from Ashʿath ibn ʿAbd al-Malik.” This is an important point. Al-Tirmidhī likewise records it (600) through another route from Muʿādh. This further confirms al-Haythamī’s other error, as previously indicated, and proves the annotator in question guilty of ignorance, stupidity, and heedlessness of the consequences resulting from his alleged correction