As for al-Haythamī, he said in al-Majmaʿ (4/141):

“Al-Bazzār narrated it, and it contains Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Farrāʾ, whom I do not know; the rest of its narrators are narrators of the Ṣaḥīḥ collections.”

Shaykh al-Aʿẓamī endorsed this in his annotation on Kashf al-Astār. The three annotators of al-Targhīb (2/553) likewise followed him and therefore declared the hadith weak. All of them overlooked al-Bayhaqī’s narration, which explicitly identifies him as Maḥbūb ibn Mūsā. He is known as one of Abū Dāwūd’s teachers, and al-Dhahabī deemed him trustworthy in al-Kāshif. Al-Ḥāfiẓ said in al-Taqrīb:

“Truthful.”

I say: This is why, when al-Ḥāfiẓ cited in Mukhtaṣar Zawāʾid Mukhtaṣar al-Bazzār the preceding statement of his teacher al-Haythamī concerning Abū Ṣāliḥ—“I do not know him”—he commented critically (1/529):

“I say: He is Maḥbūb ibn Mūsā, trustworthy and upright.”

I further say: Ibn Khuzaymah and Ibn Ḥibbān charged Ḥabīb ibn Abī Thābit with concealment in transmission. Al-Ḥāfiẓ said in al-Taqrīb:

“Trustworthy, an eminent jurist; he frequently narrated reports with omitted links and practiced concealment in transmission.”

I say: In none of the books in which al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dhahabī included his biography did he mention his concealment in transmission, such as Tadhkirat al-Ḥuffāẓ, Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ, Tārīkh al-Islām, and al-Kāshif, among others. Yet when he included him in al-Mīzān, he described him as follows:

“One of the trustworthy Successors. Ibn Maʿīn and a group declared him trustworthy, and every compiler of an independent Ṣaḥīḥ collection relied on his reports as proof without hesitation.”

He then justified his inclusion of him in it by saying:

“Had al-Dūlābī and others not mentioned him, I would not have mentioned him.”