Similar is al-Dhahabī’s statement in al-Mughnī:

“Truthful, but prone to error. Ibn Maʿīn and others declared him trustworthy, while al-Nasāʾī and a group declared him weak. Al-Bukhārī and Abū Zurʿah said: ‘His hadith are rejected.’”

Ibn al-Jawzī went to excess in al-ʿIlal al-Mutanāhiyah (2/212–213), declaring it defective also on account of al-ʿAlāʾ ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. He said:

“Yaḥyā said: ‘His hadith is not evidence; his reports are inconsistent. People have always avoided his hadith.’”

This is unwarranted pedantry on his part, for the man is trustworthy, and Muslim relied upon him as evidence. There is only slight criticism of him, which does him no harm. Al-Dhahabī said in al-Mughnī:

“Truthful and well-known. Ibn ʿAdī said: ‘I do not consider there to be anything objectionable in his hadith.’ Abū Ḥātim said: ‘His hadith is sound,’ though he found some of his reports objectionable.”

Al-Zanjī was corroborated. Abū Yaʿlā said in his Musnad (11/348/6461): Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd Allāh narrated to us; he said: Ibn Abī Ḥāzim narrated to me from al-ʿAlāʾ, with the same report.

I say: This is a good chain of transmission. Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd Allāh—al-Zubaydī—is truthful.

Those above him in the chain are trustworthy narrators from among the transmitters of the Ṣaḥīḥ. Hence al-Haythamī said in al-Majmaʿ (5/244):

“Abū Yaʿlā transmitted it, and its narrators are narrators of the Ṣaḥīḥ, apart from Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr; and he is trustworthy.”

Ibn al-Jawzī declared it defective on the basis of a strange defect, saying of Abū ʿAmr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ḥīrī, the transmitter of Abū Yaʿlā’s Musnad:

“He was a Shiite!”