The report was transmitted by Abū Dāwūd and others, and a number of scholars declared it authentic; its chain is sound, as clarified in Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl 303. Imām Aḥmad also adduced the ḥadīth of Rafāʿah on this point, as his son ʿAbd Allāh relates in al-Masāʾil 81 / 287.

When the author listed the limbs of prostration he said: “Others hold that the prayer is not valid unless one prostrates on both the forehead and the nose.”

I say: That is the correct position, because the Prophet ﷺ said, “There is no prayer for the one whose nose does not touch the ground as his forehead does.” The ḥadīth is authentic on the criterion of al-Bukhārī, as stated by al-Ḥākim and al-Dhahabī. It is reported through several routes from ʿIkrimah on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās, traced back to the Prophet, as I have shown in my documentation of The Prophet’s Prayer.

Regarding the final sitting and the recitation of the tashahhud therein, the author writes: “He said to the man who prayed badly: When you raise your head from the last prostration and sit for the duration of the tashahhud, your prayer is complete.”

I say: I have not found this wording in any of the routes of the ḥadīth of the man who prayed badly—and I had gathered them all at the beginning of the documentation. What does occur in some of them is the wording: “When you sit in the middle of the prayer, be at ease, spread out your left thigh, then recite the tashahhud.” Abū Dāwūd recorded it (1 / 137) with a good chain. This is evidence that the tashahhud is obligatory in the first sitting, and therefore the sitting itself is obligatory, for whatever an obligation cannot be fulfilled without becomes obligatory. This differs from the version cited in the book, which ties the completion of the prayer to sitting for the length of the tashahhud in the final sitting, the implicit sense of which is that reciting the tashahhud is not obligatory. That implication—even were the ḥadīth authentic—is not intended, as will be shown by the succeeding ḥadīth of Ibn ʿAbbās.