the guest died before you? The Messenger of Allāh (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) said: He mentioned him: Not twenty nights passed before he died as a polytheist. I said: And this isnād [chain of transmission] consists of narrators all of whom are trustworthy except for al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who is a client of Banū Hāshim, known only through Dāwūd's narration from him as in "Tārīkh al-Bukhārī" (4/1/5) and "al-Jarḥ wa-al-Taʿdīl" (3/211). They did not mention any criticism or praise about him, so he is unknown. The statement of the ḥāfiẓ in "al-Taqrīb": "obscure" is an error because it means "unknown condition," as he stated in the introduction that this rank is for "those from whom more than one person has narrated but who has not been declared trustworthy." I said: And al-Haythamī overlooked this, as he said in "al-Majmaʿ" (1/117): "It was narrated by al-Ṭabarānī in 'al-Kabīr,' and its narrators are the narrators of (al-Ṣaḥīḥ)!" This is because al-ʿAbbās was not included by the two Shaykhs, nor the rest of the six, but was included by Abū Dāwūd in "al-Marāsīl" and "al-Qadar," and his ḥadīth in "al-Marāsīl" resembles this in meaning. It was also narrated therein (no. 508) through the path of Dāwūd from him: A man came to al-ʿAbbās and said: What do you say about al-Ghayṭalah—the soothsayer of Banū Sahm—in the Fire with ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib? He was silent, then said: What do you say about al-Ghayṭalah... and al-ʿAbbās struck his nose. He went to the Prophet (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), and the Messenger of Allāh said: "Why does one of you harm his brother in the matter even if it is true?!" Similarly, it was narrated by Ibn Saʿd in "al-Ṭabaqāt" (4/24-25) in a more complete form. The ḥadīth was also narrated by al-Jawraqānī in "al-Abāṭīl wa-al-Manākīr" (1/235) from