I then returned to Musnad Abī Yaʿlā and found that its chain of transmission differed from the preceding one only in the narrator reporting from Sulaym al-Khashshāb. Abū Yaʿlā said (5/101/2711): “Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā related to us: Sulaym ibn Muslim al-Makkī related to us: Naḍr ibn ʿArabī related to us,” with this chain.

I said: It thus became clear to me that my doubt concerning al-Haythamī’s declaring the narrators—other than Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā—to be trustworthy was well founded. For the chain in Abū Yaʿlā’s version also revolves around Sulaym al-Khashshāb, and he is not trustworthy. Al-Dhahabī said in al-Mīzān:

“Sulaym ibn Muslim al-Makkī al-Khashshāb, the scribe... Ibn Maʿīn said: ‘A wicked Jahmite.’ Al-Nasāʾī said: ‘His hadith is abandoned.’ Aḥmad said: ‘His hadith is worth nothing.’”

Then another doubt came to mind: al-Haythamī’s identification of Abū Yaʿlā’s teacher, “Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā,” as “Ibn Abī Sumaynah.” I feared that “Yaḥyā” might be a corruption of “Baḥr”—namely, al-Tamīmī al-Hujaymī—as mentioned above. Several considerations led me to this:

First: al-Ṭabarānī’s statement in the two Muʿjams, following the hadith:

“No one narrated it from Naḍr ibn ʿArabī except Sulaym ibn Muslim; Muḥammad ibn Baḥr al-Hujaymī alone narrated it.”

Second: Ibn Ḥibbān’s statement in al-Ḍuʿafāʾ (The Weak Narrators), in the entry on Muḥammad ibn Baḥr al-Baṣrī (2/300):

“A shaykh who resided in Balhujaym, in Basra. Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī reported to us from him. He narrates from weak narrators reports which no one else narrated from them, such that one comes to suspect that he was reversing them and attributing them to those narrators. I do not know whether the defect in those hadiths lies with him or with them. Whichever of them is responsible, his reports cannot be used as evidence unless his integrity is established by examining his narrations from trustworthy narrators.”