from the ḥadīth of Saʿīd ibn Jumhān." Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim said: "It is a reliable ḥadīth in terms of transmission. Saʿīd ibn Jumhān was narrated from by Ḥammād ibn Salamah, al-ʿAwām ibn Ḥawshab, and Ḥashraj." I said: A group of the imams have authenticated him, among them Aḥmad, Ibn Maʿīn, and Abū Dāwūd. Al-Ḥāfiẓ said in "al-Taqrīb": "He is truthful, with some unique narrations." I said: Therefore, this ḥadīth of his is strengthened by those previously mentioned, among them al-Ḥākim, who authenticated its isnād here, as he did with another ḥadīth (3/606) which Aḥmad paired with this ḥadīth, and al-Dhahabī agreed with him. Al-Ḥāfiẓ indicated a similar authentication in "al-Fatḥ" (13/182) saying in agreement: "Ibn Ḥibbān and others authenticated it." Imām Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī used it as evidence in his section on "al-Iʿtiqād" (p. 7). Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah authenticated it in his "Qāʿidah" on this ḥadīth, preserved in the al-Ẓāhiriyyah library in his handwriting in "his draft" (fol. 81/2 - 84/2). He said at its beginning: "It is a well-known ḥadīth from the narration of Ḥammād ibn Salamah, ʿAbd al-Wārith ibn Saʿīd, and al-ʿAwām ibn Ḥawshab from Saʿīd ibn Jumhān from Safīnah, the freed slave of the Messenger of Allāh (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). It was narrated by the people of the sunnah like Abū Dāwūd and others, and Imām Aḥmad and others relied on it in affirming the caliphate of the four rightly-guided caliphs. Aḥmad confirmed it and used it as evidence against those who hesitated in the caliphate of ʿAlī due to the division of people over him, to the extent that Aḥmad said: 'Whoever does not consider ʿAlī as the fourth caliph is more astray than the donkey of his family.'" He forbade marrying into them, and this is agreed upon among the jurists and scholars of the sunnah.... The death of the Prophet (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) was in the month of Rabīʿ al-Awwal in the eleventh year of Hijrah, and to