their comments on al-Mundhirī’s source-reference that we mentioned (1/298):
“An authentic report attributed to a Companion, narrated by Aḥmad (2/418) and al-Ḥākim (2/298), and it is authentic. The word ‘attributed to a Companion’ must be added after the compiler’s words, ‘according to the criteria of both of them,’ because the hadith is attributed to a Companion, not to the Prophet!”
Thus, they confused what is attributed to the Prophet with what is attributed to a Companion and, in their utter ignorance, deemed all of it to be attributed to a Companion! You have already learned that the report attributed to the Prophet contains something not found in the Companion report—namely, the words, “One who sits in the mosque ...,” as al-Mundhirī explicitly stated. Yet they were blind to all of this, and rejected the report attributed to the Prophet wholesale and in detail, as though they had not seen it in the book explicitly ascribed to the Prophet and narrated by Aḥmad! Allah is the One whose help is sought.
- “A Muslim performs prayer while his sins are raised above his head. Whenever he prostrates, they fall away from him; and when he finishes his prayer, his sins have fallen away.”
Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (6/307/6125) and al-Muʿjam al-Ṣaghīr (p. 237), Ibn Abī Ḥātim in al-ʿIlal (1/124/324), and al-Aṣbahānī in al-Targhīb (2/800/1957), through several routes from Bishr ibn Ādam, who said: Ashʿath ibn Ashʿath al-Saʿdānī narrated to us; ʿImrān al-Qaṭṭān narrated to us; Sulaymān al-Taymī narrated to us from Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī, from Salmān al-Fārisī, may Allah be pleased with him, who said: The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: ... Then he cited it.
Al-Ṭabarānī said: “Bishr alone narrated it.”
I say: There is disagreement concerning him. As was his practice, al-Ḥāfiẓ summarized the scholars’ statements about him in al-Taqrīb: “Truthful, but with some weakness.”