through the hadith of Saʿīd ibn Jumḥān.”
Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim said: “It is a hadith whose transmission is established. Saʿīd ibn Jumḥān was narrated from by Ḥammād ibn Salamah, al-ʿAwwām ibn Ḥawshab, and Ḥushraj.”
I say: A number of leading scholars declared him trustworthy, including Aḥmad, Ibn Maʿīn, and Abū Dāwūd.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ said in al-Taqrīb: “Truthful, though he has some solitary reports.”
I say: For this reason, those previously mentioned considered this hadith of his strong. Among them was al-Ḥākim, who declared its chain of transmission authentic here, just as he declared authentic another hadith (3/606), which Aḥmad cited alongside this hadith; al-Dhahabī concurred with him. Al-Ḥāfiẓ alluded to a similar authentication in al-Fatḥ (13/182), saying in agreement: “Ibn Ḥibbān and others declared it authentic.”
Imām Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī cited it as proof in his treatise on creed (p. 7).
Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah likewise declared it authentic in a treatise of his on this hadith, preserved in the al-Ẓāhiriyyah Library in his own handwriting, in his draft (fols. 81/2–84/2). At its beginning, he wrote:
“It is a well-known hadith, narrated by Ḥammād ibn Salamah, ʿAbd al-Wārith ibn Saʿīd, and al-ʿAwwām ibn Ḥawshab from Saʿīd ibn Jumḥān, from Safīnah, the freed slave of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. It was recorded by the compilers of the Sunan collections, such as Abū Dāwūd and others. Imām Aḥmad and others relied upon it in establishing the caliphate of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs. Aḥmad affirmed it and used it as evidence against those who withheld judgment concerning ʿAlī’s caliphate because people had differed over him, to the point that Aḥmad said: ‘Whoever does not count ʿAlī as the fourth caliph is more astray than his family’s donkey.’ He prohibited intermarriage with such a person, and this is agreed upon by the jurists and the scholars of the Sunnah.... The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, died in the month of Rabīʿ al-Awwal in the eleventh year after the Hijrah, and up to