Al-Bayhaqi also recorded it (2/160) through this same line of transmission: “Sufyan, Shuʿbah and Abu Hanifah informed us from Musa b. Abi ʿAisha, from ʿAbd Allah b. Shaddad, who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said …,” and he quoted the hadith in full. Al-Tahawi transmitted it as well, though only via Sufyan. The report likewise appears in mursal form from Musa, on the authority of Ibn Shaddad, in the narrations of Mansur b. al-Muʿtamir, Ibn ʿUyaynah, Israʾil b. Yunus, Abu ʿAwanah, Abu l-Ahwas, Jarir b. ʿAbd al-Hamid, and other reliable authorities. Al-Daraqutni and al-Bayhaqi judged the mursal version to be “the correct one.” Ibn al-Humam objected to them in Fath (1/239), saying: “Ahmad b. Maniʿ stated in his Musnad: Ishaq al-Azraq told us—Sufyan and Sharik narrated to us—from Musa b. Abi ʿAisha, from ʿAbd Allah b. Shaddad, from Jabir (may Allah be pleased with him), in a marfuʿ report.” He added, “This chain is sound on Muslim’s standards, for both Sufyan and Sharik connected it; hence it cannot be counted among the purely mursal transmissions.” If this chain in the now-lost Musnad of Ahmad b. Maniʿ proves reliable—so much so that even Ibn Hajar did not possess a copy, as al-Kashmiri notes in al-Fayd (2/277)—then the hadith is sahih with a continuous isnad, and Abu Hanifah would not be the sole transmitter. Otherwise, it remains a mursal report whose chain is nonetheless sound. Note also that its sender, ʿAbd Allah b. Shaddad, was a senior, trustworthy tabiʿi, born during the Prophet’s lifetime and classed among the jurist-scholars, as stated in al-Taqrib. Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah has already remarked: “A mursal of this kind is accepted as evidence by unanimous agreement of the four imams and others; al-Shafiʿi even declared this explicitly.” *The Musnad of Ahmad b. Maniʿ is one of the works later incorporated into Ibn Hajar’s al-Matalib al-ʿAliyah. Imam al-Busiri cited the same chain in Ithaf al-Khira al-Mahra (nos. 1567, 1832) and graded it authentic.*