of the jurists; and it remains possible that Ibn Jurayj heard it from ʿAṭāʾ in the elevated (marfūʿ) form, for Sulaymān had transmitted it to him from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, without an isnād.

I say: the truth is that this chain is sound, for Abū Kāmil is trustworthy, a ḥāfiẓ, and Muslim relied on him, so his additional wording is acceptable. The only reservation is that Ibn Jurayj was a mudallis and here he relays the report with ʿanʿana. If, however, he actually heard it from Sulaymān, then one must deem the report authentic. Indeed, in one of his mursal transmissions of it—cited by al-Dāraqutnī—he explicitly said “ḥaddathanī,” yet that route contains al-ʿAbbās ibn Yazīd al-Baḥrānī. Although he is considered trustworthy, some declared him weak and said he errs; the heart therefore is not fully at ease with his extra wording, all the more so since every path from Ibn Jurayj is recorded with ʿanʿana. Afterwards I found that al-Zaylaʿī, in Naṣb al-Rāya (1/19), quotes Ibn al-Qaṭṭān as saying: “Its isnād is sound, being continuous and carried by reliable transmitters.” He refuted al-Dāraqutnī much as Ibn al-Jawzī had done, and ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq followed him in that, as noted in Tanqīḥ al-Taḥqīq by Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (241/1).

Later I noticed in the entry on Ibn Jurayj in Tahdhīb that he said: “Whenever I say, ‘ʿAṭāʾ said,’ I must have heard it from him, even if I do not explicitly say, ‘I heard.’” This is an important observation. Yet here Ibn Jurayj does not say “ʿAṭāʾ said,” but rather “from ʿAṭāʾ.” Do the two expressions carry the same legal weight, or do they differ? To me, the first seems more likely, and Allah knows best.

There is another route through ʿAṭāʾ, narrated by al-Qāsim ibn Ghuṣn from Ismāʿīl ibn Muslim on his authority. Al-Khaṭīb recorded it in his Tārīkh (6/384), and al-Dāraqutnī also related it, remarking, “Ismāʿīl ibn Muslim is weak, and al-Qāsim ibn Ghuṣn is the same. ʿAlī ibn Hāshim diverged, narrating it from Ismāʿīl ibn Muslim al-Makkī, from ʿAṭāʾ, from Abū Hurayrah—but that, too, is not sound.” Jābir al-Juʿfī likewise reported it from ʿAṭāʾ on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās.