Abu Abd Allah was al-Bushangi. Al-Bayhaqi also narrated a similar report in al-Asma’ from Imam Ahmad.

There is no doubt that what is meant is one who bears the Quran, memorizes it, and recites it for the sake of Allah, Most High, seeking no recompense or gratitude for it from anyone but Allah, Mighty and Majestic. Otherwise, he is as Abu Abd al-Rahman—namely, Abd Allah ibn Yazid al-Muqri’—said, as recorded in Musnad Abi Ya‘la:

“Its meaning is that whoever has committed the Quran to memory and then enters the Fire is worse than a pig.” *

3563—“If any of you offers a sacrifice, let him eat from his sacrificial animal.”

Ahmad (2/391), Ibn ‘Adi (88/1–2), and al-Khatib in al-Tarikh (7/34) recorded it through two routes from al-Hasan ibn Salih, from Ibn Abi Layla, from ‘Ata’, from Abu Hurayra, from the Prophet, who said: ... and then cited it.

I say: This chain of transmission is weak. All its narrators, apart from Ibn Abi Layla—whose name was Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman, the Kufan judge and jurist—are trustworthy narrators whose reports were included by Muslim. Al-Dhahabi listed him in al-Du‘afa’ and said:

“Truthful, but poor in memory ...”

Al-Hafiz said in al-Taqrib:

“Truthful, but extremely poor in memory.”

Abu Zur‘ah and Abu Hatim also declared it defective on the grounds that it was mursal, as Ibn Abi Hatim related from them in al-‘Ilal (2/38 and 41). Yet the narrator who transmitted it with a connected chain is trustworthy, so the defect is the one I have mentioned.

Once you know this, then the statement of al-Haythami (4/25)—whom al-Manawi followed—is:

“Ahmad narrated it, and its narrators are the narrators of the Sahih!”