However, the hadith has corroborating reports: one of them is recorded by Ibn Majah, while the rest are found in al-Tabarani and others. I had regarded it as strengthened by them in the original edition of Sifat al-Salah, relying on al-Haythami and al-Hafiz’s documentation of them, and I alluded to this in Sifat al-Salah. Al-Haythami cited it from Ibn Abbas and declared its narrators trustworthy, whereas al-Hafiz judged its chain of transmission weak; he also cited it from Abu Barzah and declared its narrators trustworthy, while al-Hafiz graded its chain good. It was also reported from Ali—whose condition you have already learned—and from Anas; both of them deemed its chain weak.

When Allah enabled some people to publish the source works to which they had attributed the hadith, it was no longer in keeping with the principles of hadith documentation to rely on those who attribute reports to those works without consulting the works themselves directly—especially since, as you have seen, there is a contradiction between the teacher and his student in their rulings on some of them. It therefore became incumbent upon me to draw directly from those sources and to pass judgement on their chains of transmission, in accordance with the saying: “Whoever reaches the sea has no need of watercourses.”

So I say—and with Allah lies success:

First: the hadith of Ibn Abbas. Al-Haythami said (2/241):

“Al-Tabarani recorded it in al-Kabir, as did Abu Ya‘la, and its narrators have been declared trustworthy.”

That is what he said! Its chain with Abu Ya‘la (4/335/2447) is: Abu al-Rabi‘ narrated to us: Salam ibn Sulaym narrated to us, from Zayd al-Ammi, from Abu Nadrah, from Ibn Abbas …

Al-Tabarani likewise recorded it through this route (12/167/12781): Al-Husayn ibn Ishaq al-Tustari narrated to us: Abu al-Rabi‘ al-Zahrani narrated to us: Salam al-Tawil narrated to us, through this chain.

I say: This is a very weak chain of transmission. Salam al-Tawil is abandoned, as al-Dhahabi stated in al-Mughni and al-Hafiz in al-Taqrib; and this is al-Haythami’s view in most of his hadith citations; (see