“Had I not heard something from ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥamiq al-Khuzāʿī, I would have brought about the separation of al-Mukhtār’s head from his body.” I heard him say: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said—and he then cited it.

This is an authentic chain of transmission, and its narrators are reliable, as stated in al-Zawāʾid. Rifāʿah ibn Shaddād al-Qitbānī—with the qāf vowelled with kasrah and the following tāʾ unvowelled—was declared reliable by al-Nasāʾī, and Ibn Ḥibbān included him in al-Thiqāt. The remaining narrators in the chain are narrators of Muslim. In one version recorded by al-Nasāʾī:

“When a man feels secure with another man, who then kills him, a banner will be raised for him ...”

It has also been reported with the wording:

“Whoever gives a man assurance concerning his life and then kills him, I am free of the killer, even if the slain man is an unbeliever.”

It was narrated by al-Bukhārī in al-Tārīkh, al-Ṭaḥāwī in al-Mushkil (1/78), al-Kharāʾiṭī, al-Ṭabarānī in al-Ṣaghīr (pp. 9, 121), and Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilyah (9/24), through several routes from al-Suddī, from Rifāʿah ibn Shaddād, with the same wording.

This is a good chain of transmission. Its narrators are reliable except for al-Suddī, who is Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān; he was truthful but prone to error, as stated in al-Taqrīb.

Al-Ṭayālisī also narrated it (p. 181, no. 1285): “Muḥammad ibn Abān narrated to us from al-Suddī,” with the wording:

“When a man gives another man assurance concerning his own life,”

and the rest is exactly the same.

Ibn Ḥibbān also narrated it in his Ṣaḥīḥ (no. 1682—Mawārid) with the wording:

“Whichever man gives a man assurance,”

with the rest the same. It likewise appears in al-Musnad (5/223–224), except for the words: “even if the slain man is an unbeliever.”

It has a corroborating report from the hadith of Muʿādh ibn Jabal, attributed to the Prophet, with the same wording.