His remark under heading 6 reads: “Abu Dawud and Ibn Majah transmit from ʿAʾishah that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘Allah and His angels bless those who pray on the right-hand sides of the rows.’”

I say: This wording is not reliably preserved from ʿAʾishah, as al-Bayhaqi pointed out. The sound version from her is: “upon those who straighten (or complete) the rows.” I discussed the defect of this report in detail in Daʿīf Sunan Abī Dāwud, no. 104. Everyone who graded it good, past or recent—including the annotator of al-Baghawi’s Sharḥ al-Sunnah, 3/374—overlooked this flaw. That annotator even quoted al-Bayhaqi’s statement but failed to rebut it with evidence; instead he tried to combine two irreconcilable positions!

He further says: “Ahmad and al-Ṭabarānī relate with a sound chain from Abū Umāmah that the Prophet ﷺ said, ‘Allah and His angels bless the first row.’ They asked, ‘Messenger of Allah, and the second …?’”

I reply: There is absolutely no basis for declaring this chain sound. In the Musnad it appears through the route of Faraj, who said, ‘Luqmān narrated to us from Abū Umāmah.’ Faraj is weak, as al-Ḥāfiẓ states in al-Taqrīb—especially when he narrates from Luqmān. Al-Dāraquṭnī was asked about Faraj ibn Faḍālah’s report from Luqmān ibn ʿĀmir from Abū Umāmah and replied, “All of this is singular (gharīb).” Hence neither al-Mundhirī nor al-Haythamī authenticated it. The former merely said, “Ahmad transmitted it with a chain that is not objectionable, as did al-Ṭabarānī and others,” while the latter wrote, “Ahmad and al-Ṭabarānī in al-Kabīr recorded it, and the men of Ahmad are reliable.” His words hint that the reliability accorded to some of its narrators is rather lenient—and that refers to none other than Faraj ibn Faḍālah.

The narration of al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib in the Ṣaḥīḥ collections of Ibn Khuzaymah and Ibn Ḥibbān suffices in its stead; see Ṣaḥīḥ al-Targhīb, 490.