“I do not know whether he had retained it accurately or not.”

I say: Nevertheless, the basic principle regarding one whose reliability has been questioned in this manner is to accept his hadith unless it becomes clear that he erred in it—as is the case here. Otherwise, one would have to refrain from accepting the hadith of many of al-Bukhārī’s narrators whom some hadith masters criticized, such as Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh and the like. This is why we find that his student al-Tirmidhī regarded this hadith as strong, and a number of hadith masters accepted it, among them al-Mundhirī in al-Targhīb (2/205) and Ibn Taymiyyah in al-Fatāwā (12/13 and 23/282), as well as many others, were one to investigate them, such as al-Ḍiyāʾ al-Maqdisī, as I had previously quoted from one of his treatises in al-Ṣaḥīḥah.

Mūsā ibn ʿUbaydah differed from him, saying: “Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb narrated to us from ʿAwf ibn Mālik al-Ashjaʿī, attributing it to the Prophet, with wording similar to it.”

It was recorded by Ibn Abī Shaybah in al-Muṣannaf (10/461/9982), and by al-Ṭabarānī in al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ (1/213–214). This Mūsā is al-Rabadhī, who is weak.

It has another route, through ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, from Abū al-Aḥwaṣ, from Ibn Masʿūd, attributing it to the Prophet.

Ibn Mandah recorded it in his treatise Refutation of Those Who Say that Alif-Lām-Mīm Is a Letter (nos. 4, 5, and 6), through Ḥammād ibn Zayd, Sufyān al-Thawrī, and others, from him. Both of them narrated from him before he became confused; thus, it has an authentic chain of transmission. I had previously documented Sufyān’s version in al-Ṣaḥīḥah (660), through al-Khaṭīb’s narration; and I have now found it also through Ibn Mandah’s narration from both him and Ḥammād in his aforementioned book, edited by the learned researcher ʿAbd Allāh al-Judayʿ.

However, I found that he had sought to declare these two authentic routes—and others transmitted by Ibn Mandah and others as reports stopped at Ibn Masʿūd—defective, on the grounds that most of the authentic routes from Ibn Masʿūd are—