Al-Dhahabi then criticized him, saying:

“The defect is a break in the chain: this Abu Hazim is al-Madani, not al-Ashjaʿi. Abu Sakhr did not meet al-Ashjaʿi, nor did al-Madani meet Abu Hurayrah.”

I say: Ahmad and his son ʿAbdullah connected the chain by mentioning Abu Salih between al-Madani and Abu Hurayrah. Both are trustworthy, authoritative transmitters; thus the defect is removed and the hadith is established—praise be to Allah.

I have also found another route from Abu Hurayrah. Al-Khatib narrated it (3/117) from Abu al-Husayn Muhammad ibn al-ʿAbbas al-Faqih: Muhammad ibn ʿUthman ibn Abi Shaybah narrated to us; my father and my uncle Abu Bakr narrated to us, from Abu ʿUbaydah al-Haddad, from Ibn ʿAwn, from Ibn Sirin and al-Hasan, who said: “May we not live to see a time when people no longer love one another.” Abu Hurayrah said: “I heard the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, say”—and he then cited it with the wording of Sahl’s hadith.

Its narrators have been declared reliable, except for this Abu al-Husayn. Al-Khatib said: “There is objectionable material in his narrations.” He then cited this hadith for him.

Al-Bayhaqi also recorded the hadith in his Sunan (10/236–237), through ʿUthman ibn Saʿid: Harun ibn Maʿruf al-Baghdadi narrated to us—through a chain like Ahmad’s, with precisely the same text.

It has a corroborating report with the wording:

426 — “The believer is congenial and befriends others; there is no good in one who neither befriends nor is befriended. The best of people are those most beneficial to people.”

In al-Jamiʿ (The Compendium), he said: Al-Daraqutni, in al-Afrad (Individual Narrations), and al-Diya al-Maqdisi, in al-Mukhtarah (The Selected Collection), narrated it from Jabir; then