“Abū Salamah narrated from her, and I fear that she may be Khawlah bint al-Yamān, because the chain of transmission for their two hadiths is one and the same: it consists solely of ʿAlī ibn Thābit, from al-Wāziʿ ibn Nāfiʿ, from Abū Salamah, relating the hadith we mentioned under the name of Khawlah bint al-Yamān—meaning the hadith, ‘There is no good in women gathering …’—as well as the one we have mentioned here. However, the narrators below ʿAlī ibn Thābit differ between the two hadiths, and this requires consideration.”
What is astonishing is that the hadith to which he referred in his words, “the one we have mentioned here,” is precisely this hadith under discussion: “Its trace does you no harm.” It is the hadith Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr mentioned in this biographical entry on bint Yasār, as I indicated earlier. Yet it is not narrated by this Abū Salamah from her, or from anyone else; rather, it is narrated by ʿĪsā ibn Ṭalḥah from Abū Hurayrah, as stated previously. Thus, this is another route for the hadith, in which her name occurs as bint Yasār, and its chain is authentic. So how can it be feared that this is an error, and that the correct name is bint al-Yamān, when its narrator, ʿAlī ibn Thābit, is weak—as Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr himself indicated—indeed, he is abandoned, as has preceded?
More astonishing still is that when al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar quoted Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s statement up to his words, “because the chain of transmission for their two hadiths is one and the same,” he responded: “I say: It does not necessarily follow, merely because the chain to both of them is one while the texts differ, that they are one person.” Thus, he accepted the claim that the chain is one and the same, though this is not so—and he was the imām and hadith master. Glorified is He who neither errs nor forgets.
Fourth: al-Ḥāfiẓ’s earlier statement, “It has a mursal corroborating report,” is likewise an error, for we know of no mursal corroborating report for it, nor did al-Ḥāfiẓ mention one in al-Talkhīṣ. Rather, he mentioned a corroborating report attributed only to the Companion ʿĀʾishah, who said:
“If a woman washes away the blood but it does not disappear, she should alter it with a yellow dye, whether wars or saffron.”