Bukhari 5081

He also reported it from Ibn Yusuf, from Layth, from Yazid, from Irak, from Urwa, that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, proposed marriage to Ayesha through Abu Bakr. This is a mursal narration.

The Hafiz said in Fath [al-Bari], page 124, that Ismaili says that the report is mursal, and if something like this is admitted into the Sahih, then the same would have to apply to other mursal reports.The Hafiz responded to Ismaili's statement, saying that even though the form of its wording appears to be mursal, it is a narration from Urwa concerning a story that happened to his maternal aunt Ayesha and his maternal grandfather Abu Bakr. It appears that he took this from his aunt Ayesha or from his mother Asma bint Abu Bakr. Ibn Abdul-Barr said, "When it is known that the narrator met the person he is reporting from, and he was not a mudallis, then it is taken that he heard it directly from the one he reported from, even if he did not use a wording that explicitly indicates that."

I say, it is possible that Urwa learned it from his mother Asma, or from his aunt Ayesha, or from other companions, and it is possible that he heard it from a follower. For this reason, I favor what Daraqutni, Abu Masud, Abu Naeem, and Humaydi said, namely that the sahih view is that it is a mursal narration.Allah knows best.