You can therefore see that Imam Ahmad, may Allah have mercy on him, first narrated it from his two shaykhs, Aswad ibn ʿAmir and Abu al-Mundhir—whose name was Ismaʿil ibn ʿUmar al-Wasiti—both of whom said: “Kamil narrated to us.” Abu al-Mundhir alone added, “Abu Kamil,” thus giving Kamil the kunya Abu Kamil. This kunya is not mentioned in his biographical notice; rather, they gave him the kunya Abu al-ʿAlaʾ, and it is also said that it was Abu ʿAbd Allah. If this is reliably established, then it is a third kunya for him. In any event, he was the one and same shaykh of both narrators.

Ahmad then said: “Abu Ahmad narrated to us ...” This was Ahmad’s third shaykh—his name being Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Zubayri—and he too narrated it from Kamil. This is what Ahmad meant by his words, “through his chain of transmission.” Anyone familiar with this matter can understand it in no other way, although the wording is not entirely free of ambiguity; I think this is due to the copyists.

In any case, even if it were assumed that Abu Ahmad al-Zubayri’s chain of transmission was a separate one, the intermediary between him and Abu Salih is unknown and unnamed. So how could it be authentic? And the first chain is good, as brother Wasiyy Allah himself said; so how could that be authentic as well?

I then saw that al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar indicated in Atraf al-Musnad (7/215/9282) that the chain is one, saying:

“From Aswad ibn ʿAmir, Abu al-Mundhir, and Abu Ahmad—all three from Kamil Abu al-ʿAlaʾ, from Abu Salih, from Abu Hurayrah.”

This account has also been reported at greater and lesser length in other wordings. I cited it in Sifat al-Salah (p. 148). *

3326—“This is al-ʿAbbas ibn ʿAbd al-Muttalib, the most open-handed of Quraysh and the foremost of them in maintaining ties of kinship.”

Recorded by Ahmad in al-Musnad (1/185) and al-Fadaʾil (2/924/1768), and by ʿAbd Allah