and declare hadiths weak is not something mastered by one who takes it up late in life or while still young in the discipline. Rather, it is mastered by the specialists who have devoted their lives to it and grown old in its service, until the authentic Prophetic hadith has come to flow in their veins and become an inseparable part of their lives. As for one who is not so, there is no doubt that he will fall into the evil consequence of rejecting authentic hadiths and declaring them weak—or the reverse—as is the way of the proponents of whims and religious innovations. We ask Allah for safety.

To bring the matter closer to the readers’ understanding, it is necessary to cite the hadith through the three routes which the eminent shaykh declared weak, so that the reality may appear before them in its clearest form. This is because, at that time, I had cited it briefly and referred it to some of my books, without setting out its routes. I therefore say:

The first: from Yaḥyā ibn Ayyūb, from Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Shimāsah, from Zayd ibn Thābit.

It was transmitted by al-Tirmidhī (3949), Aḥmad (5/185), Ibn Abī Shaybah (5/325), al-Ḥākim (2/229), al-Ṭabarānī in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (5/175–176), and Ibn ʿAsākir in History of Damascus (1/112–113, Damascus edition), through the route of Yaḥyā ibn Isḥāq al-Saylaḥīnī and Jarīr ibn Ḥāzim, both from Yaḥyā ibn Ayyūb through this chain.

The second: from Ibn Lahīʿah, from Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb, through the same chain.

It was transmitted by Aḥmad (5/324), al-Fasawī in Knowledge (2/301), al-Ṭabarānī (5/176/4934), and Ibn ʿAsākir as well (1/114 and 115), through several routes, including that of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Wahb from him. Al-Fasawī and Ibn ʿAsākir coupled ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith with Ibn Lahīʿah, and Ibn Ḥibbān alluded to this in his forthcoming narration.

The third: ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith—and Ibn Salam mentioned another narrator alongside him—from Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb, through the same chain.