“Ali ibn Asim narrated to us from al-Muthanna ibn al-Sabbah, from Amr ibn Shu'ayb, through the same chain, though with some transposition in the wording. Its wording is:

‘It is disbelief to repudiate a lineage, however slight it may be, or to claim a lineage one does not know.’”

I say: This is a weak chain of transmission to Amr, because of the condition of al-Muthanna and Ali ibn Asim. However, it does not impair the first route from Amr. This is why al-Mundhiri did not consider it defective on account of these two narrators, and al-Haythami followed him, saying (1/97):

“Ahmad and al-Tabarani in al-Saghir and al-Awsat narrated it; and it is among the reports of Amr ibn Shu'ayb from his father, from his grandfather.”

By this, he indicates that it is a good report, which Imam Ahmad and others cited as evidence, as explained in its proper place.

I say: One indication of the ignorance of the three annotators of al-Targhib, and of their poor understanding of it, is that they failed to notice what I have pointed out regarding the practice of al-Mundhiri and al-Haythami. What further demonstrated this to me was that, when they quoted the aforementioned statement of al-Haythami, they cut off from it his words, “and it is among the reports ...,” and so on, because—in their profound ignorance—they could make no sense of it. They therefore spoke presumptuously against him and al-Mundhiri, criticizing them by saying—as though they had discovered a treasure!:

“We say (!): Its chain contains al-Muthanna ibn al-Sabbah, who is weak and became confused in his later years!”

This is false with respect to al-Tabarani’s narration, for it is free of him, as you have seen. Through this falsehood, they wronged the hadith by prefacing their discussion of it with the label, “Weak!” To my knowledge, no one before them had declared it weak. Here is al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar himself—from whose Taqrib they quoted the judgment that al-Muthanna is weak—who mentioned the hadith in al-Fath (12/42) through Ahmad’s narration, and did not