“They lie! Now fighting has come. There will never cease to be among my ummah a community standing firm upon the truth, prevailing over the people. Allah will cause the hearts of certain people to deviate, so that they will fight them and thereby attain their share from them.”

While turning his back toward Yemen, he said: ... then he mentioned the hadith and added:

“I have indeed been informed that I shall soon be taken away, and you will follow me in groups. Good will remain bound to the forelocks of horses until the Day of Resurrection, and their owners will be aided in maintaining them.”

I say: Its chain of transmission is authentic through the first route from al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who is trustworthy and one of Muslim’s narrators.

In the other route is Bakr ibn Sahl, who is somewhat weak.

I did not recognize the shaykh of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Ḥimṣī. Then it became clear that his father’s name had been corrupted; the correct name is Sālim. For I saw that al-Bayhaqī transmitted the hadith in al-Asmāʾ wa al-Ṣifāt (pp. 462–463) through Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Ṣāghānī: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūsuf informed us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sālim al-Ḥimṣī informed us; Ibrāhīm ibn Sulaymān al-Afṭas narrated to us through the same chain.

I say: This too is an authentic chain of transmission, because ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sālim al-Ḥimṣī—the Ashʿarī—is unanimously regarded as trustworthy and is among al-Bukhārī’s narrators.

One indication of Shaykh al-Kawtharī’s misguidance, his hostility toward the sunnah and the hadiths concerning the divine attributes, and his misleading of readers is his comment in the margin of al-Asmāʾ concerning this Ibn Sālim:

“Abū Dāwūd used to criticize him!”