Rabi‘ah ibn Luqayt was deemed trustworthy by Ibn Hibban and al-‘Ijli, and a number of people narrated from him.
Thus, the chain is sound, Allah willing.
The wording of the hadith under discussion in Muslim’s narration is longer than what we have cited. It is narrated from Abu Muslim al-Khawlani, who said: The beloved and trustworthy one—beloved to me, and trustworthy in my estimation—‘Awf ibn Malik al-Ashja‘i related to me:
“We were with the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—nine, or eight, or seven of us, when he said, ‘Will you not pledge allegiance to the Messenger of Allah?’ We had only recently pledged allegiance, so we said, ‘We have already pledged allegiance to you, O Messenger of Allah!’ Then he said, ‘Will you not pledge allegiance to the Messenger of Allah?’ We said, ‘We have already pledged allegiance to you, O Messenger of Allah!’ Then he said, ‘Will you not pledge allegiance to the Messenger of Allah?’ So we stretched out our hands and said, ‘We have already pledged allegiance to you, O Messenger of Allah! Upon what, then, are we pledging allegiance to you?’ He said, ‘That you worship Allah and associate nothing with Him, observe the five daily prayers, and obey’—then he uttered a phrase softly—‘and that you do not ask people for anything.’”
Indeed, I saw some of those men drop their whip, yet none of them would ask anyone to hand it to him.*
- “Is there not a man who will lend a household with no milk-producing animal a she-camel from among his camels, which yields a large bowlful of milk in the morning and another in the evening? Its reward is surely immense.”
Muslim (3/88)—whose wording is cited here—Ahmad (2/242), and Abu Ya‘la (6268) narrated it through various routes from Sufyan ibn ‘Uyaynah, from Abu al-Zinad, from al-A‘raj, from Abu Hurayrah, tracing it back to the Prophet (1). Al-Husayn al-Marwazi also narrated it in his additions to Ibn al-Mubarak’s al-Zuhd (780), through Sufyan, from Ibn ‘Ajlan, from Sa‘id al-Maqburi, from Abu Hurayrah, attributed to the Prophet. The two additions are found in his narration.