I said: By this route, Abū Yaʿlā also recorded it in his Musnad (12/444–445), and al-Ṭabarānī likewise in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (23/323/738), through other chains from ʿĪsā, with the same wording.

I said: This is a good chain of transmission, and all its narrators are trustworthy. There is only slight criticism concerning al-Suddī—whose name was Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān—which is not detrimental; moreover, he was among the narrators used by Muslim. As for the commentator on the Musnad declaring it defective by saying:

“Its narrators are trustworthy, except that—in my view—it is interrupted. As far as I have examined, I know of no report of Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suddī narrating from Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Jadalī. And Allah knows best!”

I say: This is among the most absurd remarks of his that I have seen. Al-Suddī was a Successor who narrated from Anas in Sahih Muslim, and he saw a number of the Companions, such as al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, Abū Saʿīd, and Abū Hurayrah, as stated in al-Mizzī’s Tahdhīb. Added to this is the fact that al-Suddī was never accused of concealment in transmission. Thus, in a case such as his, contemporaneity is sufficient, as is the position of the majority of the leading hadith masters. Perhaps his pen inadvertently inclined toward the methodology of Imam al-Bukhārī in his Sahih, which requires an actual meeting and does not regard mere contemporaneity as sufficient. Yet I do not think that he adopts this view; otherwise, hundreds of the rulings of authenticity and goodness that he has affirmed would collapse. He is generally lenient in many such cases, particularly when they involve narrators whom no one besides Ibn Ḥibbān deemed trustworthy—and Ibn Ḥibbān does not require an actual meeting.

Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn, al-Ṭabarānī’s shaykh, was one of those omitted by our colleague Shaykh al-Anṣārī, may Allah have mercy on him, from the biographical entries in his beneficial book Bulghat al-Qāṣī wa-al-Dānī. Al-Khaṭīb gave him a fine biographical notice (2/129), mentioning that a number of hadith masters narrated from him, though he omitted al-Ṭabarānī. He then said:

“He was discerning and authored the Musnad. Al-Dāraquṭnī said: ‘He was trustworthy.’ Ibrāhīm ibn Isḥāq al-Ṣawwāf said: ‘Abū Ḥuṣayn was truthful, well known for seeking hadith, and trustworthy.’ He died in 296 AH.”