or other sūrahs of the same kind?”
Thus, the lightening of the prayer that the Prophet ﷺ ordered Muʿādh and every other imam to adopt is exactly what he himself used to do—may my father and mother be ransomed for him. For, as Anas stated, “He offered the lightest of prayers while still perfect in every respect.” He also said, “Pray as you have seen me pray.”
If on some occasion the imam senses that the congregation prefer a longer recitation than that, there is no harm—in fact, it is commendable—for the Prophet ﷺ once recited in the Maghrib prayer “the longer of the two long sūrahs,” and on another occasion he recited Sūrat al-Ṭūr. Conversely, should a circumstance arise that calls for shortening the prayer even further, he would do so, just as he instructed when a child is crying and the like.
(1) The printed edition reads: wa-nahwuhuma (“and their like”).
(2) The substance of this hadith appears in both Sahih collections and elsewhere; see: Sahih al-Bukhari, Book of Adhan, chapter “One who complains about his imam for prolonging the prayer,” hadith no. 705 (Fath al-Bari 2:200); and Sahih Muslim, Book of Prayer, chapter “Recitation in the Nightfall Prayer,” hadith no. 465 (1:339).
(3) In MS Ṭ: huwa bi-abi wa-ummi (“may I be ransomed for him by my father and mother”).
(4) In MS Ṭ: fa-innahu kana kama qala Anas (“for he was exactly as Anas described”).
(5) The phrase wa-qad qala: “sallu kama ra’aytumuni usalli” (“and he also said, ‘Pray as you have seen me pray’”) is absent from MS A.
(6) Al-Bukhari records this hadith in several places; for example, Book of Adhan, chapter “The call to prayer for travellers when they are in a group…,” hadith no. 631 (Fath al-Bari 2:111), with the wording: “wa-sallu kama ra’aytumuni usalli.” Ahmad likewise includes it in his Musnad 5:53, in the Musnad of al-Huwairith b. Malik, with the wording: “wa-sallu kama tarawni usalli.”
(7) The term tawli al-tawlayn refers to the longer of the two long surahs—namely al-Maida and al-Araf, while others say al-Anam and al-Araf; on either view, the longer one is al-Araf. See: Fath al-Bari 2:247; Jamiʿ al-Usul 5:344.