after the declaration of the tahlīl—that very supplication. He then branded the report as “inconsistent,” exactly as the author cites from him. Al-Tirmidhī’s criticism, however, concerns the entire report, not merely the additional words. Accordingly, the author ends up quoting two contradictory judgments: Muslim’s authentication of the hadith, and al-Tirmidhī’s declaration that it is defective, without preferring one assessment over the other.

The fact of the matter is that the hadith is sound, and the inconsistency to which al-Tirmidhī alludes is not the sort that undermines a report’s authenticity. This is not the place to spell out the details; whoever wishes to confirm what I am saying should refer to Shaykh Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir’s notes on al-Tirmidhī, 1/77–83, where he gathers all of the chains and shows that no inconsistency exists among them.

If it be asked, “Granted that the hadith is authentic, what of the additional phrase found in al-Tirmidhī’s version?”

I answer: its chain is sound. All of its transmitters are trustworthy narrators found in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, except for al-Tirmidhī’s shaykh, Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿImrān al-Taghlibī, who is reliable (ṣadūq) according to Abū Ḥātim. Furthermore, the addition is supported by corroborating reports: the hadith of Thawbān in Ibn al-Sunnī, no. 30, and traditions from Ibn ʿUmar and Anas as cited by al-Bayhaqī in his Sunan, 1/78. For that reason Ibn al-Qayyim affirmed in Zād al-Maʿād, 1/69, that the hadith with this addition is established from the Prophet ﷺ.

Concerning the hadith of Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, traced back to the Prophet—“Whoever performs ablution and then says: Subḥānaka Allāhumma…,” and so on—he writes: “Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Awsat; its transmitters are those of the Ṣaḥīḥ, and the wording is his. Al-Nasāʾī also narrated it and at the end said, ‘It will be sealed with a seal….’”

I remark: several observations are in order.

First: he attributes the report to al-Nasāʾī in an unqualified manner, which suggests that it appears in the Sunan. That is not the case; al-Nasāʾī recorded it only in ʿAmal al-Yawm wa-l-Laylah, as al-Nawawī and the ḥadith master al-Mizzī specify in al-Tuhfah, 3