"I do not know if he preserved it or not." I said: However, the principle in such cases where the narrator is criticized is to accept his ḥadīth unless his error is clearly established, as is the case here. Otherwise, it would be necessary to refrain from accepting the ḥadīth of many of al-Bukhārī's narrators who are criticized by some of the scholars, like Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh and others. Therefore, we see that his student al-Tirmidhī has strengthened this ḥadīth, and a group of scholars have agreed with him, including al-Mundhirī in "al-Targhīb" (2/205), Ibn Taymiyyah in "al-Fatāwá" (12/13 and 23/282), and many others, such as al-Ḍiyāʾ al-Maqdisī, as I have quoted from a section of his work in "al-Ṣaḥīḥah." Mūsá ibn ʿUbaydah disagreed with him and said: Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb narrated to us from ʿAwf ibn Mālik al-Ashjaʿī in a marfūʿ form with a similar wording. It was recorded by Ibn Abī Shaybah in "al-Muṣannaf" (10/461/9982), and al-Ṭabarānī in "al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ" (1/213-214). And this Mūsá: he is al-Rabadhī; weak. There is another chain from the narration of ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib from Abū al-Aḥwaṣ from Ibn Masʿūd in a marfūʿ form. It was recorded by Ibn Mandah in the section "Refutation of those who say: (Alif Lām Mīm) is a letter" (numbers 4, 5, and 6) from the path of Ḥammād ibn Zayd and Sufyān al-Thawrī and others from him. They both narrated from him before his confusion, so it is a sound isnād. I had previously extracted Sufyān's narration in "al-Ṣaḥīḥah" (660) from the narration of al-Khaṭīb, and now I found it from the narration of Ibn Mandah as well from him and from Ḥammād in his aforementioned book, verified by the researcher ʿAbd Allāh al-Judayʿ. But I saw that he has gone to criticize these two sound paths and others narrated by Ibn Mandah and others—by stopping—on the grounds that most of the sound paths from Ibn Masʿūd are..