“Peace be upon you, O Prophet, and Allah’s mercy and blessings. Peace be upon us and upon the righteous servants of Allah. I bear witness that there is no god worthy of worship but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger.”

The evidence that it is obligatory is the hadith of Abdullah ibn Mas‘ud: “Before the tashahhud was made obligatory for us, we used to say …” (1)

If someone were to ask: You have cited this hadith as evidence that the final tashahhud is an integral pillar; why, then, do you cite it here as evidence that the first tashahhud is obligatory but not a pillar?

The answer is that when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ forgot the first tashahhud, he did not return to it; rather, he compensated for it by performing the prostrations of forgetfulness (2). Had it been a pillar, it could not have been compensated for by the prostrations of forgetfulness.

The evidence that pillars cannot be compensated for by the prostrations of forgetfulness is that, when the Prophet ﷺ ended the Zhuhr or Asr prayer after two units, he completed it, performed what he had omitted, and then performed the prostrations of forgetfulness (3). This shows that pillars are not waived due to forgetfulness; they must necessarily be performed. Accordingly, when the first tashahhud was waived due to forgetfulness, this indicated that it is an obligatory element: the prayer is valid without it when it is omitted forgetfully, but is not valid without it when it is omitted deliberately.

His statement, “and its sitting,” with the letter jim pronounced with a fatḥah; and it is not correct for us to say