in print at that time, nor was it available in manuscript at the al-Zahiriyyah Library in Damascus. And Allah knows best. I therefore relied at that time on al-Suyuti’s silence concerning it, although I knew that what he passes over without comment requires considerable scrutiny. Yet in such a case, neither I nor any other fair-minded student can do otherwise than rely on the scholars unless their error becomes evident. This has been my practice in all my writings, especially since the exception here has countless supporting evidences in the Quran and the sunnah. Allah is the Granter of success.
Note: I mentioned above that Muslim and others transmitted the hadith—without the exception—from Umm Salamah. I then found a supporting narration for it in the hadith of Ibn Abbas, which al-Haythami cited in Majmaʿ al-Zawaʾid (5/76–77), saying:
“Abu Yaʿla and al-Tabarani, in his three Muʿjams, narrated it. Its chain includes Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Abi Sumaynah, whom Abu Hatim, Ibn Hibban, and others declared trustworthy. There is some criticism concerning him, but it is not detrimental; the rest of its narrators are trustworthy.”
This judgment of his troubled me when I compared it with al-Tabarani’s chain in al-Muʿjam al-Saghir and my tracing of it in al-Rawd al-Nadir (420), for its chain is very weak, although it was included in his foregoing judgment. I therefore thought that there was certainly an error in it—at the very least, in its generality. Thus, I saw that I had to continue investigating Abu Yaʿla’s chain, as well as al-Tabarani’s chain in al-Muʿjam al-Awsat. This uncovered errors on the part of al-Haythami, and others on the part of certain contemporaries who possess some acquaintance with this discipline.
I found that the chain in al-Muʿjam al-Awsat is identical to that in al-Muʿjam al-Saghir. He said (4/204/3357): Jaʿfar ibn Muhammad al-Firyabi related to us: Muhammad ibn Bahr al-Tamimi related to us: Sulaym ibn Muslim al-Khashshab related to us: al-Nadr ibn ʿArabi related to us, from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn Abbas.