Is the Hadith a Forgery?

[Minimalist]

Experience shows that oral tales are not reliably transmitted from person to person.  There is no way to verify what they originally said.... if they said anything.

But Muhammad definitely said that the sun sets in a muddy stream.  That part is not a forgery.

More likely stolen.

https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Dhul-Qarnayn_..._the_Great

Kevin Van Bladel sums up the correspondence with the Qur’an passage in his recent article:

Thus, quite strikingly, almost every element of this short Qur’anic tale finds a more explicit and detailed counterpart in the Syriac Alexander Legend. In both texts the specific events are given in precisely the same order. Already earlier several cases of specific words that are exact matches between the Syriac and the Arabic were indicated. The water at the place where the sun sets is “fetid” in both texts, a perfect coincidence of two uncommon synonyms (Syraic Saryâ and Arabic hami’a).[