Ishaq ibn Tariq and Salih al-Faradi both informed us, saying:
Yusuf ibn Khalil related to us; and Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Hanbali likewise transmitted—through another route.
Ahmad ibn Abi’l-Khayr also transmitted to us, from this very Muhammad. Muhammad ibn Tahir, the ḥāfiẓ, related to us in the year 506 AH; Qasim ibn Ahmad in Amid informed us; Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Jishnas narrated to us; al-Hasan ibn ʿAli al-ʿAdawi narrated to us; Shayban ibn Farrukh narrated to us; Nafiʿ Abu Hurmuz narrated to us, from Anas ibn Malik, who said:
“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: ‘Hold fast to the two rakʿahs of Fajr, for in them lie abundant bounties.’ (1)
”
Abu Zurʿah said: My father recited to us—his own composition:
O you who flaunt your graceful height,
your glowing cheek and twin bright eyes,
who brandish that arched temple-lock—
a lām-shaped curve above an eye—
have mercy, I beg you—may I be your ransom—
on a lovesick soul collapsed in the wasteland;
struck down by the arrows you loosed
from beneath the bow of your eyebrows.
By God, naught now lies between parting
and the one I love—save me.
(1) Nafiʿ Abū Hurmaz—whom al-ʿUqaylī calls Nafiʿ b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid—was judged weak by Ahmad and several others; Ibn Maʿīn even branded him a liar on one occasion. Abū Ḥātim said he is “abandoned, his ḥadīth worthless,” and al-Nasāʾī ruled him “unreliable.”
Ibn Ḥajar cites the report in al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliya 1/149, tracing it to al-Ḥārith b. Abī Usāma. The modern editor remarks that the chain contains ʿAbd al-Ḥakam—identified, in his view (al-Qasmīlī), as a transmitter whose ḥadīth is munkar. The same report appears in the manuscript Musnad al-Ḥārith, 1/66.
A parallel narration from Ibn ʿUmar is found in Aḥmad 2/82, but its chain includes an unknown transmitter. Al-Ṭabarānī records another route in al-Kabīr that passes through Muḥammad b. al-Baylamānī, a weak narrator. Both al-Ṭabarānī and Abū Yaʿlā transmit it again, and the isnād of Abū Yaʿlā is judged sound; see Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid 2/217-218.
Al-Mundhirī reproduces the Abū Yaʿlā version in al-Targhīb wa-l-Tarhīb 1/398. Muslim (no. 725) preserves an authentic report from ʿĀʾisha: “The two rakʿas of fajr are better than the whole world and what it contains.” Bukhārī 3/37 and Muslim (nos. 724, 94) likewise quote her: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was never more diligent regarding a supererogatory act than the two rakʿas before dawn.”