155 – Jābir (may Allah be pleased with him) related that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said to Bilāl: “When you give the adhān, recite it calmly and deliberately; when you pronounce the iqāmah, do so briskly; and leave between your adhān and your iqāmah the amount of time it takes a person who is eating to finish his food …” – and so forth. Narrated by al-Tirmidhī, who declared it weak (1).

Status of the ḥadīth:
The report is weak. Al-Tirmidhī said, “We know it only through the narration of ʿAbd al-Munʿim,” whose chain is unknown. It was likewise deemed weak by al-Bayhaqī (1/248) and Ibn ʿAdī. A corroborating tradition exists from Abū Hurayrah; Abū Shaykh also transmitted it through Sulaymān, and ʿAbd Allāh, the son of Imām Aḥmad, narrated it from Ubayy b. Kaʿb, yet all of these versions are unsound.

Nevertheless, the same meaning is reported from the statements of ʿUmar and his son ʿAbd Allāh (may Allah be pleased with them both) as recorded in the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shaybah.

Al-Ṣanʿānī remarked: Even so, the aim for which the adhān was legislated lends strength to the various narrations of this report.

Glossary of Key Terms:
• tarassal – to slow down, enunciating the phrases of the adhān with measured clarity rather than rushing through them.
• iḥdar – with the letters ḥāʾ and dāl (both unpointed) followed by a ḍammah on the dāl and then a rāʾ; al-ḥadr denotes speeding up the iqāmah.
• faraġa – yafruġu: “to finish or complete something”; the intended meaning here is