is a mudallis (a narrator known to employ ambiguous transmission), and since he has given it by ʿanʿanah, the chain is weak. It is listed in “Weak Abō Dāwūd,” 144. The annotator of Zād al-Maʿād, however, overlooked this ʿanʿanah and therefore declared the isnād sound.

Regarding his remark on reciting a particular sūrah: “As for his reciting the final verses or the middle verses of sūrahs, nothing has been preserved from him.”

I reply: As far as the middles of sūrahs are concerned, that is acceptable, but not the endings. For this reason I wrote in al-Taʿlīqāt al-Jiyād:

“One must correct him with what the author himself—meaning Ibn al-Qayyim—records in Risālat al-Ṣalāh, p. 207, where he says:
‘No one has transmitted that he ﷺ recited a verse from the middle of a sūrah or from its end, except in the Sunnah of Fajr. In that prayer he would recite these two verses: “Say, We believe in Allah and in what has been sent down to us…” and “Say, O People of the Book, come to a word that is fair between us and you….”’ ”

I remark: Muslim has recorded it (2/161), and others as well, through the narration of Ibn ʿAbbās.

Furthermore, the compiler himself cited this very ḥadīth in the second fascicle of the small-format edition under the heading “The Sunnah of Fajr and what is to be recited in it.” He should therefore have used it to amend what he quoted from Ibn al-Qayyim—at the very least, he ought to have hinted at it.