Ahmad 7837

Its isnad is sahih. Muhammad bin Abdullah Ansari is Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Muthanna bin Abdullah bin Anas bin Malik. His reliability was established earlier at 2355, and we add that he was born in the year 118 and died in the year 215, though it is also said 218. Ibn Abu Hatim gave his biography at 3/2/305, as did Ibn Saad at 6/2/48-49, Dhahabi in Tadhkirat al-Huffaz 1:337-338, and Khatib in Tarikh Baghdad 5:408-412.As for his statement, "Each of the two said, 'It follows the usage yataaqabuna fikum malaikatun,'" this is a permissible, correct, and eloquent linguistic usage.Imam Ahmad did not mention the rest of the isnad here, referring instead to the isnad before it. But he wanted to make clear that his two teachers, Ibn Bakr and Ansari, said in the isnad that Abu Saaib was the freed slave of Abdullah bin Hisham bin Zahra, thus attributing his clientship to Abdullah rather than to his father, Hisham bin Zahra. Both attributions are correct, for the freed slave of the father is also the freed slave of the son, and the reverse holds true as well. This hadith is a repetition of the one before it.