of hadith or its transmission. I could cite many examples of this; the closest to our present topic is al-Rafiʿi’s statement in his commentary on al-Wajiz: “It is reported from Ibn ʿUmar that the Prophet ﷺ combined Zuhr and ʿAsr because of rain.” Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar refuted him in his Takhrij (4 / 471), saying: “It has no basis. Al-Bayhaqi mentioned it from Ibn ʿUmar only as a mawqūf report, and some jurists cited it with the chain Yahya b. Wadhih – Musa b. ʿUqbah – Nafiʿ – Ibn ʿUmar, ascribed to the Prophet (marfūʿ).”

This shows that the hadith, when traced back to the Prophet ﷺ, has absolutely no foundation. How, then, could it have a place in al-Bukhari yet remain unknown to its commentator Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani and to others besides him? Such a thing is impossible. We ask Allah to protect us from error.

Another possibility then occurred to me: perhaps the hadith is indeed in al-Bukhari but without the phrase “on a rainy night.” Instead, at the end of the report we read: “Ayyub said, ‘Perhaps it was on a rainy night.’ He replied, ‘It could be.’” The second speaker here is Abu l-Shaʿthaʾ, the transmitter of the hadith from Ibn ʿAbbas. As you can see, Abu l-Shaʿthaʾ voiced this only as a conjecture. It may be that the author quoted the hadith from memory without consulting his book, slipped, and inserted the conjectural words into the body of the report; in hadith terminology this would be considered idrāj (interpolation). Perhaps, too, he thought Abu l-Shaʿthaʾ’s conjecture more likely correct, and deemed that a justification for the insertion.

Even so, such a procedure is unacceptable to the scholars, and this guess is overthrown by the fact that Muslim recorded the hadith from Ibn ʿAbbas in the wording: “without fear and without rain.” Al-Hafiz therefore concluded: “It is thus ruled out that the combination of prayers mentioned was due to fear, travel, or rain.”