An example of takhrij

I was involved in an online discussion and found somebody quoting a hadith which sounded a bit strange to me, so I decided to check it out. This a summary of what I found.

Zayd bin Thabit's hadith is:
al-Hakim from Muhammad bin Ya'qub from Ibrahim bin Abdullah al-Sa'di from Wahb bin Jarir from his father Jarir bin Hazim from Yahya bin Ayyub al-Ghafiqi from Yazid bin Abi Habib from Abdul Rahman bin Shimama from Zayd bin Thabit who said:
We were with the Messenger of Allah (saw) joining together the Qur'an in pieces of cloth when the Messenger of Allah (saw) said: Blessed be Sham... the hadith.

al-Hakim said: This hadith is authentic according to the condition of the two shaykhs (Bukhari and Muslim) and they did not narrate it. In it is clear evidence that the Qur'an wasn't collected in one go. Some of it was gathered in the presence of the Messenger of Allah (saw) then in the presence of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq and the third collection in which the order of the Surahs was arranged was in the khilafa of Amir al-Mu'minin Uthman bin Affan may Allah be pleased with them all.

al-Dhahabi agreed that the hadith is authentic.

The hadith is also narrated by al-Tirmidhi, al-Tabarani, Ahmad and Ibn Abi Shayba.

Let's check al-Hakim's claim that the hadith is authentic.
Zayd bin Thabit: Companion, no need to check, he's reliable.
Abdul Rahman bin Shimama: Ibn Hajar said: Reliable (thiqah).
Yazid bin Abi Habib: Ibn Hajar said: Reliable (thiqah), faqeeh (jurist).
Yahya bin Ayyub al-Ghafiqi: Ibn Hajar said: Honest but may make mistakes.
Ibn 'Adi said: In my view he's honest.
Ibn Ma'in said: Acceptable in hadith.
Ahmad said: He had bad memory.
Ibn al-Qattan al-Fasi said: He is one of those people whose status I know and that he is not reliable.
Abu Hatim said: He is not reliable.
al-Nasa'i said: He is not strong.
al-Darqutni said: Some of his hadith have problems.
Jarir bin Hazim: Ibn Hajar said: Reliable (thiqah) but there is weakness in his hadith from Qatada and he made mistakes when narrating from memory. al-Dhahabi said he narrated from Yazid bin Abi Habib.
Wahb bin Jarir: Son of Jarir bin Hazim, Ibn Hajar said: Reliable.
Ibrahim bin Abdullah al-Sa'di: al-Dhahabi said: Honest.
Muhammad bin Ya'qub: I haven't found his biography but as al-Hakim narrates a lot from him I assume he's reliable.

As far as the hadith itself:
al-Tirmidhi said: This is a strange hasan hadith, we only know it from Yahya bin Ayyub. Al-Haythami considers it authentic as does al-Albani. al-Dhahabi authenticated it here yet elsewhere criticized a hadith because Yahya bin Ayyub was in the isnad.

For me this isnad has two major problems: Firstly, Yahya bin Ayyub is too weak to consider his lone narration to be sufficient to make the hadith authentic.

Secondly, Jarir bin Hazim studied with Yazid bin Abi Habib so it seems strange to find him narrating from Yahya bin Ayyub who is, as we have seen, not particularly reliable. It is also noticeable that Jarir is from the sixth generation, whereas Yahya is from the seventh generation, which means that Jarir is older than Yahya yet he narrated this from him. This seems unlikely and it may be that this is one of Jarir bin Hazim's mistakes.

Now, the first reason alone is enough to consider this isnad weak, and this is something that al-Albani concedes.

Al-Albani in his Silsila Sahiha argues that the hadith is authentic because there's another narration from Ahmad with the isnad Hasan from Ibn Lahi'a from Yazid bin Abi Habib from Abdul Rahman bin Shimama from Zayd bin Thabit who said:
We were with the Messenger of Allah (saw) one day when he said: Blessed be Sham... the hadith.

If you notice in this isnad there is no mention of joining together the Qur'an. But Ibn Lahi'a is also weak and al-Albani's argument is the two weak isnads support one another. This is true as far as the saying of the Prophet (saw): "Blessed be Sham", but this does not apply to what was mentioned about joining together the Qur'an which is an addition which cannot be considered sound.

And Allah knows best.