A Note and a Benefit:

For a very long time, I refrained from declaring this hadith authentic because of this Yaḥyā ibn Abī Usayd. This was from the time I began dividing the book al-Targhīb into its two sections, Ṣaḥīḥ and Ḍaʿīf, approximately forty years ago. Consequently, it was absent from its three editions. There are many reasons for this, some of which I shall mention, as feasible, in the introduction to the fourth edition of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Targhīb, Allah willing.

However, I shall mention one reason relating to our hadith here. I say:

At that time, the references and sources that assist in thoroughly investigating narrators and distinguishing authentic hadith from weak hadith were not available, even though I was living at the al-Ẓāhiriyyah Library and, by Allah’s care and grace, attended it more constantly than its own employees. It was a library richly furnished with various printed books and manuscripts. Yet, despite that, I lacked many sources—and this remains the case, though to a lesser degree. The present example lies before us: the biographical entry for Yaḥyā ibn Abī Usayd and this hadith of his. I passed through several stages before the means became available to judge it authentic. There is no harm, then, in recounting them to the readers, for the sake of record, reflection, and benefit. I say:

First: When the time came, in that long-ago period, to comment on it in al-Taʿlīq al-Raghīb, I wrote the following after citing its chain of transmission from al-Ḥākim:

“Al-Nasāʾī also transmitted it through this route in al-Kunā, as stated in al-Tahdhīb. Al-Ḥākim said, ‘Authentic,’ and al-Dhahabī concurred with him. I say: Its narrators are trustworthy, apart from this Ibn Abī Usayd, for I found no one who mentioned him, although al-Tahdhīb listed him among those who narrated from ʿUbayd ibn Abī Suwayyah.”