I said: For this reason, al-Dhahabī stated categorically that Abū Yaʿlā narrated from this Ibn Baḥr. He and Ibn Ḥibbān were among those most knowledgeable about the biographical notices of Ibn Ḥibbān’s shaykhs; had they known that Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Abī Sumaynah also narrated from Sulaym ibn Muslim al-Khashshāb, they would have mentioned him as well. This is further supported by:

Third: al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī did not mention this al-Khashshāb among the shaykhs of Ibn Yaḥyā in Tahdhīb al-Kamāl. His practice in that work was to investigate the names of the subject’s shaykhs with a degree of thoroughness unmatched, to our knowledge, by anyone else.

For this reason, I thought that Ibn Yaḥyā was a scribal corruption of Ibn Baḥr. What lent support to this was the great similarity between the two names, particularly when their diacritical dots are omitted. Thus, the aforementioned corruption also occurred in al-Ṭabarānī’s statement that I cited under “First,” whereas the name appears correctly in the chain of this hadith in al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ. In al-Muʿjam al-Ṣaghīr, however, it appears correctly in both places. The same is true in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (12/373/12046), but only in the chain, since his practice there was not to append any remarks to the hadiths, unlike in the other two Muʿjams.

In order to complete the research and verification, I consulted al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar’s chain-supported work, al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliyah (1/2/1), and found that he cited the chain of the hadith as narrated by Abū Yaʿlā exactly as it appears in his Musnad, with Yaḥyā in it. The same is found in al-Maqṣad al-ʿAlī fī Zawāʾid Abī Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī, by his teacher al-Haythamī (2/271–272/1522). I therefore thought that it was an old scribal corruption. Allah knows best.

I shall now begin by pointing out some of the mistaken impressions I fell into:

1- This hadith of al-Hujaymī appears in al-Haythamī’s Majmaʿ al-Baḥrayn (7/105/4125), marked with the letter ṣād, signifying that it is among the reports unique to al-Muʿjam al-Ṣaghīr. This too is a corruption;