“…This young man has already reported many narrations from me, and he sits right beside me; yet Abū Rajāʾ possesses material that is not in our hands. In my view you should give him permission—perhaps he will profit thereby.”
The Imam Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad, along with a number of others, transmitted to us by authorization. They said: ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad informed us; Hibat Allāh ibn Muḥammad informed us; Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ghaylān informed us; Abū Isḥāq al-Muzakkī (1) informed us; Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj informed us; Qutaybah narrated to us; al-Layth narrated to us, from Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb, from Abū al-Ṭufayl, from Muʿādh:
During the expedition of Tabūk, whenever the Prophet ﷺ set out before the sun had begun its decline, he would postpone the noon prayer and combine it with the afternoon prayer, performing the two together. If he set out before sunset, he would delay the sunset prayer until he performed it with the night prayer; but if he departed after sunset, he would hasten the night prayer and perform it together with the sunset prayer.
(1) The term is pronounced with a u-sound on the first consonant, an a-sound on the second, and a doubled k—muzakki. It is used for the person who certifies witnesses, investigates their reliability, and is known to the judge. A well-known family in Nishapur bore this title; several scholars came from it, among them Abu Ishaq, whose full name is Ibrahim b. Muhammad b. Yahya al-Muzakki, the leading shaykh of Nishapur in his day. He studied under Ibn Khuzayma, Abu al-Abbas al-Sarraj and others. Al-Hakim Abu Abdullah and Abu Nuaym al-Hafiz narrated from him. He died in 362/972–3 CE.
(2) Reported by Abu Dawud (no. 1220, Book of Prayer, chapter: Combining the two prayers) and by al-Tirmidhi (no. 553, same chapter), who declared it hasan gharib, adding that Qutayba alone relates it from al-Layth. It is also found in Ahmad 5:241–242, al-Darqutni 1:392–393, and al-Bayhaqi 3:163. Several leading hadith critics judged the report defective because Qutayba is the sole transmitter from al-Layth, and al-Bukhari hinted—according to al-Hakim’s Ulum al-Hadith—that a weak narrator inserted it into Qutayba’s transmission. A second chain from Muadh b. Jabal is given by Abu Dawud (no. 1208) through Hisham b. Saʿid, from Abu al-Zubayr, from Abu al-Tufayl; Hisham’s reliability is disputed, and the reliable students of Abu al-Zubayr—such as Malik, al-Thawri and Qurra b. Khalid—omit any mention of combining the prayers in advance (jamʿ al-taqdim). Another report on jamʿ al-taqdim comes from Ibn Abbas, recorded by Ahmad 1:367 and al-Shafiʿi 1:116–117; its chain contains Husayn b. Abdullah al-Hashimi, who is weak. A supporting route runs through Hammad b. Zayd, from Ayyub, from Abu Qilaba, from Ibn Abbas, in Ahmad (no. 2191) and al-Bayhaqi 3:164; its transmitters are trustworthy, yet—as Ibn Hajar notes in Fath al-Bari 2:480—there is doubt whether the wording is truly Prophetic, the stronger view being that it is a mawquf statement of Ibn Abbas.