Ahmad 7611

Its chain of transmission is sahih. Mansur is Ibn Mutamir, the reliable hafiz, whose reliability we established previously at 2489, and we add here that Bukhari gave him a biographical entry in al-Kabir 4/1/346, saying, "He was among the most reliable of men," and Ibn Abu Hatim also gave him an entry at 4/1/177-179.As for Abbad bin Anis, he has no entry in Tahdhib or its derivative works, nor in Jarh wa Tadil by Ibn Abu Hatim, nor did Husayni give him an entry in Ikmal, nor did the Hafiz in Tajil, and I did not find him in Mizan or Lisan Mizan. I had almost concluded that the name was a scribal distortion, despite its consistent appearance in all three source manuscripts, had I not found this same hadith with this same chain in Jami al-Masanid wal-Sunan 7:208-209, where Hafiz bin Kathir gave it this heading, "Abbad bin Anis, from Abu Hurairah." This confirmed for me the correctness of what appears in the source manuscripts.I then found him in Thiqat by Ibn Hibban, among the reliable narrators of the generation following the companions, page 270, where it says, "Abbad bin Anis, from the people of Madinah, narrates from Abu Hurairah, and Mansur bin Mutamir narrated from him." What further supports his reliability is the fact that Mansur narrated from him, for in Tahdhib 10:313 Ajurri reports from Abu Dawud that Mansur would narrate only from someone reliable.Furthermore, Abbad bin Anis was not the sole narrator of this hadith. It will appear later in the Musnad at 9317, 9537, 9908, 9937, transmitted through Musa bin Ali bin Uthman, who said, "Abu Yahya, freedman of Jadah, told me, I heard Abu Hurairah say that he heard from the very mouth of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ saying, 'The muezzin is forgiven to the extent his voice carries, everything moist and dry bears witness for him, and whoever attends the prayer has twenty-five good deeds recorded for him, and his sins committed between them are wiped away.'" This is the wording of narration 9537, and we will explain these chains in their proper places, Allah willing.It was likewise narrated by Abu Dawud at 515, Nasai 1:106, Ibn Majah 724, and Ibn Hibban in his Sahih 3:153-154 (from the manuscript of Ihsan), all of them through the route of Musa bin Abu Uthman from Abu Yahya from Abu Hurairah. Munziri attributed it in Targhib 1:107 to Ibn Khuzayma in his Sahih as well. Its meaning has already been given previously in the hadith of Ibn Umar at 6201, 6202, apart from the statement about the witness and what follows it.Regarding his statement "the extent of his voice," Ibn Athir said, "al-mada means the utmost limit, meaning he attains the fullness of Allah's forgiveness when he exhausts his effort in raising his voice, reaching the utmost degree of forgiveness in proportion to reaching the utmost degree in voice. It has also been said that this is a figurative illustration, meaning that if the space the voice reaches, between its farthest point and the position of the muezzin, were filled with sins, Allah would forgive him for them."As for his statement "and the witness to it [gets] twenty-five degrees," this is how it appears in the three source manuscripts and in Jami al-Masanid, except that in one it reads "twenty-five" in one grammatical form, while Jami al-Masanid has it as "and for the witness to it, twenty-five degrees." All of this, in my view, is a scribal distortion, and it appears to be an old one. The intended meaning is clear, however, from the other narrations transmitted through Abu Yahya, as we have mentioned.