His words under item 7: “On the authority of Abū Malīḥ, from his father, who said: I was present with the Prophet ﷺ on a Friday when rain fell, yet the bottoms of their sandals were hardly wet, so he instructed them to pray in their dwellings. It is narrated by Abū Dāwūd and Ibn Mājah.”

I say: The wording is that of Abū Dāwūd, but he adds after the phrase “I was present with the Prophet ﷺ”: “during the Ḥudaybiyyah campaign.” The same addition appears in Ibn Mājah. This shows that the incident took place while they were traveling, and al-Bayhaqī states this explicitly in one of his versions. It is well known that the Friday prayer is not required of a traveler; therefore, the ḥadith does not prove that rain is an excuse to omit the Friday prayer, but only the regular congregational prayer.

His statement at the end of the discussion on the time of the Friday prayer, preferring the majority view that it begins after the sun passes the meridian, and quoting al-Ḥāfiẓ: “Ibn Abī Shaybah transmitted from Suwayd ibn Ghaflah that he prayed with Abū Bakr and ʿUmar when the sun had just declined, and its chain of transmission is sound.”

I say: Suwayd spoke truly, but al-Ḥāfiẓ was mistaken—as were those who followed him, such as the present author and, before him, al-Shawkānī (3/221)—when they used this report as evidence for the point under discussion, for it contains no mention of the Friday prayer whatsoever, neither explicitly nor implicitly. Their conclusion rests on the wording cited by al-Ḥāfiẓ, which they reproduced from him in Fatḥ (2/387). This is one of his remarkable slips, difficult to imagine coming from a scholar of his stature, for the report is entirely unrelated to our issue; it concerns the ẓuhr (noon) prayer, and that is how it is explicitly stated in Ibn Abī Shaybah. He records it with an authentic chain from Maymūn ibn Mihrān: Suwayd ibn Ghaflah used to perform the noon prayer when the sun passed the meridian. Al-Ḥajjāj sent word to him, “Do not precede us in our prayer.” Suwayd replied, “I have prayed it with Abū Bakr and ʿUmar in this manner, and death is nearer to me than abandoning it.” Ibn Abī Shaybah placed it in 1/322–323 under the heading: “Those who would perform the noon prayer as soon as the sun passed the meridian and did not delay it until the heat subsided.”

Once this is understood, the alleged counter-evidence is of no value. Yet al-Ḥāfiẓ, immediately afterward, cited additional reports