One of al-Haythami’s oddities is that he followed him in Majmaʿ al-Zawaʾid (5/69–70), saying:

“Ahmad narrated it, and its narrators are trustworthy!”

Yet he mentioned only its opening portion. Shaykh Ahmad Shakir took him to task for this, saying:

“I do not know why he omitted the rest of it, for I have not found it elsewhere in it.”

What escaped him was that al-Haythami had merely followed al-Mundhiri in this. The hadith in its entirety appears in Ibn Kathir’s Jamiʿ al-Masanid (26/160/3095) and Ibn Hajar’s Atraf al-Musnad (4/28/5160).

Thirdly: One indication of the ignorance of the three annotators is their comment on the hadith in their edition of al-Targhib wa al-Tarhib (3/227):

“Good by virtue of its corroborating reports. Al-Hakim narrated it (4/146) and declared it authentic. Al-Dhahabi said: ‘Ibn Wahb heard it from him, and it is very singular.’ Ahmad also narrated it (2/178), and al-Haythami said (5/69–70): ‘Ahmad narrated it, and its narrators are trustworthy!’”

I say: This annotation contains a host of absurdities and instances of ignorance:

Firstly: Their statement, “Good by virtue of its corroborating reports,” is a lie contrary to the facts. It has no corroborating reports—not even a single one. That is why al-Dhahabi deemed it singular, as stated above.

Secondly: Their statement, “Al-Dhahabi said: ‘Ibn Wahb heard it from him, and it is very singular,’” is one of the many proofs that they prattle about what they do not know and transmit what they do not understand. It is as though they are more inarticulate than non-Arabs themselves. Otherwise, which pure Arab—let alone Arabized non-Arabs such as myself (!)—could understand the antecedent of the pronoun “him”? Yet it is perfectly clear that they copied the chain of transmission, as I did above, and that it refers to Amr ibn al-Harith; and if