Concerning the first tashahhud

As to his words regarding the desirability of shortening it: “Ibn al-Qayyim said, ‘It has never been transmitted that the Prophet ﷺ invoked blessings upon himself and his family in the first tashahhud … Whoever recommends doing so has merely inferred it from general, unrestricted texts whose proper context has been clarified and whose scope has been limited to the final tashahhud.’”

I say: No proof capable of establishing a binding argument exists that would restrict the cited general and absolute texts to the first tashahhud; therefore they retain their full generality. The strongest evidence adduced by the opposing camp is the hadith of Ibn Masʿūd mentioned in this book, yet its chain is broken, as the author noted, and so it is not sound. Ibn al-Qayyim—may Allah have mercy on him—has exhaustively set out the proofs of both sides, indicating their strengths and weaknesses, in Jalāʾ al-Afhām fī al-Ṣalāh ʿalā Khayr al-Anām; consult it, and the correctness of the view we have preferred will become clear.

I later came across material that completely overturns Ibn al-Qayyim’s blanket statement, “It has never been transmitted that the Prophet ﷺ invoked blessings upon himself and his family in the first tashahhud.” This is the report of ʿĀʾishah—may Allah be pleased with her—describing the Prophet’s night prayer:

“We used to prepare the Messenger of Allah’s siwāk and ablution water for him. Allah would awaken him whenever He wished during the night, and he would brush his teeth, perform ablution, and then pray nine rakʿahs, not sitting in any of them except at the eighth. There he would supplicate to his Lord and invoke blessings upon his Prophet, then rise without giving the salām. He would pray the ninth rakʿah, sit, praise his Lord, invoke blessings upon his Prophet ﷺ, supplicate, and then conclude with a salutation loud enough for us to hear …”

Hadith.

It was recorded by Abū ʿAwāna in his Ṣaḥīḥ 2/324 and is also found in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2/170, although Muslim did not quote it with this wording.

This is explicit evidence that the Prophet ﷺ invoked blessings upon himself in the first tashahhud just as he did in the final tashahhud. It is a rare and valuable point, so grasp it firmly. Let no one object that the report concerns only the night prayer, for the basic rule is that whatever is legislated for one prayer is legislated for all prayers, with no distinction between obligatory and voluntary; anyone who claims otherwise must furnish proof.