Yazid [ibn Abi Habib] and Imran ibn Musa narrated from him. Yet Ibn al-Madini said: “There is no objection to him; he is known.”

Thus, his hadith is good, Allah Most High willing. This is the conclusion toward which I had previously leaned in my discussion under the hadith of Ibn Adi cited above, no. 1244.

I have only repeated its documentation here in order to add a further benefit concerning its sourcing: while preparing the second and third volumes of Sahih al-Targhib, I found that al-Mundhiri, in al-Targhib, had judged the hadith defective on account of Ibn Lahi'ah. He said (3/113/2):

“Al-Bazzar and al-Tabarani, in al-Kabir and al-Awsat, narrated it through Ibn Lahi'ah; the rest of its chain of transmission consists of trustworthy narrators!”

I say: Al-Haythami said something similar in Majma' al-Zawa'id (5/158).

I say: Despite its brevity, this documentation contains some remarkable confusions, which al-Hafiz al-Naji did not point out:

First: They did not attribute it to Ahmad, though he was more deserving of attribution, given his eminent standing and earlier generation, as is well known.

Second: They overlooked Yahya ibn Ayyub—al-Ghafiqi, the Egyptian—corroborating Ibn Lahi'ah in al-Tabarani’s al-Kabir. Thus, no basis remained for judging it defective on account of Ibn Lahi'ah. One consequence of this was that the three annotators were misled by this unsupported criticism and declared the hadith weak.

Third: They erred in attributing Ibn Lahi'ah’s narration to al-Tabarani in al-Awsat; what it contains is only the aforementioned corroborating report.