sound, they would be compelled to maintain that praying bare-headed is obligatory, for it is obligatory in ḥajj—a consequence they cannot evade unless they abandon that analogy, and perhaps they will.
Likewise, his attempt to cite the marfūʿ ḥadith of ʿAlī, “Enter the mosques bare-headed and wearing your turbans, for turbans are the crowns of the Muslims,” is frail indeed. The report is extremely weak—I believe it to be fabricated—because it comes through Maysarah ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, a self-confessed forger. Al-ʿIrāqī said of him, “Discarded.”
Al-Manāwī states in Sharḥ al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr: “For this reason the compiler marked it as weak, yet it is supported by what Ibn ʿAsākir narrated in the wording, ‘Enter the mosques bare-headed and with your caps on, for that is among the hallmarks of the Muslims.’ ”
I reply: al-Manāwī never cited the chain, so one cannot judge whether it can corroborate that fabricated report or not.
In sum, the ḥadith is, at the very least, extremely weak; invoking it as evidence is impermissible, and remaining silent about it is sinful.
Subsequently I discovered that both wordings of the ḥadith appear in Ibn ʿAdī through the route of that same forger, and through him again in Ibn ʿAsākir with the alternate wording. Al-Suyūṭī reproduced it in al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr with the first wording via Ibn ʿAdī, and in al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr with the second wording via Ibn ʿAdī and Ibn ʿAsākir. Al-Manāwī thus imagined it to be a different ḥadith with another chain and treated it as supporting evidence for the first! Plainly he never examined Ibn ʿAsākir’s isnād; had he done so, this confusion and blunder—which the editorial committee of al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr at the Majmaʿ al-Buḥūth al-Islāmiyyah in Egypt (1 / 31 / 32 and 33) uncritically followed—would not have occurred. And even if we were to suppose that the second wording were free from the likes of that forger, it would still not