Concerning his statement: “Ibn Qudāmah said: It has been narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās that he said, ‘We used to say, before the tashahhud was made obligatory …’”

I say: Two observations must be made here:

First: The ḥadīth actually belongs to the corpus of Ibn Masʿūd, not Ibn ʿAbbās. It was recorded by al-Nasāʾī, al-Dāraqutnī, and al-Bayhaqī with a chain that meets the conditions of the two Shaykhs, and it was declared authentic by al-Dāraqutnī as well as by Ibn Ḥajar in Fatḥ al-Bārī.

Second: Prefacing the report with the expression “it has been narrated” gives the impression that it is weak, whereas you have just seen that it is authentic; it is cited in Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl, no. 319.

With regard to the salutation (taslīm), he said: “Waʾil ibn Ḥujr reported: I prayed with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and he would end the prayer by saying to his right, ‘as-salāmu ʿalaykum wa raḥmatullāhi wa barakātuh,’ and to his left, ‘as-salāmu ʿalaykum wa raḥmatullāhi wa barakātuh.’ Ibn Ḥajar stated in Bulūgh al-Marām: ‘It was transmitted by Abū Dāwūd with a sound chain.’”

I say: Ibn Ḥajar is correct, yet in the copies of Sunan Abī Dāwūd available to me the addition “wa barakātuh” appears only in the first taslīmah, not in the second. Al-Ṭayālisī likewise recorded it from Ibn Masʿūd as a mawqūf report with trustworthy transmitters, and al-Ṭabarānī included it in al-Kabīr (10191) as a marfūʿ narration. For that reason I preferred, in The Prophet’s Prayer, to omit this addition from the second taslīmah until evidence establishing it beyond doubt is produced.

I have traced the ḥadīth in Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl 2/30–32 and in Ṣaḥīḥ Abī Dāwūd, no. 915.