Ahmad 4624

Its chain of transmission is sahih. Muhammad bin Suqa, with a damma on the sin, the Ghanawi, his reliability was already established at 114. Muhammad bin Ubayd said, I heard Thawri say, "The trustworthy Muhammad bin Suqa related to me," and I never heard him say that of any Arab or any freedman. Bukhari gave his biography in al-Kabir 1/1/102-103.Abu Bakr bin Hafs bin Umar bin Saad bin Abu Waqqas. It is said his name was Abdullah. His reliability was already established at 1598.This hadith was related by Tirmidhi 3:117-118, from Abu Kurayb, from Abu Muawiya, with this chain. It was also related by Hakim 4:155, through the route of Sahl bin Uthman al-Askari, from Abu Muawiya, with the same chain. Hakim said, "Sahih according to the standard of the two Shaykhs, though they did not include it," and Dhahabi agreed with him.Tirmidhi related it, following the first narration, from Ibn Abu Umar, from Sufyan bin Uyayna, from Muhammad bin Suqa, from Abu Bakr bin Hafs, from the Prophet ﷺ, in similar wording. Tirmidhi said, "It did not mention 'from Ibn Umar' in it, and this is more sahih than the hadith of Abu Muawiya." That is what he said, faulting the connected version by comparing it to the disconnected one. Why? We do not know. A connection is an addition from a trustworthy narrator, and Abu Muawiya explicitly stated here, and also with Hakim, that he heard it directly from Muhammad bin Suqa. A narrator may sometimes relate a hadith as connected and sometimes as disconnected, as has been established in many hadiths, and there is no basis for faulting a connected version by an disconnected one, unless an error appears in the one who connected it.This hadith was mentioned by Munziri in al-Targhib wal-Tarhib 3:218, and he also attributed it to Ibn Hibban in his Sahih.