166 – ʿĀmir ibn Rabīʿah — may Allah be pleased with him — said: “We were with the Prophet ﷺ on a pitch-dark night and the direction of the qiblah was unclear to us, so we prayed. When the sun rose, we discovered that we had prayed facing other than the qiblah, and the verse was revealed: ‘So wherever you turn, there is the Face of Allah’ (Q 2:115).” Al-Tirmidhī recorded the report and judged it weak. (1)

Degree of authenticity
The ḥadīth is ḥasan (sound).
It has a corroborating chain from Jābir, narrated by al-Dāraqutnī (1/272), al-Ḥākim (1/324), and al-Bayhaqī (2/10). Al-Ḥākim said, “All of its transmitters can be cited as evidence except Muḥammad ibn Sālim, whose reliability or discredit I do not know.” Al-Dhahabī replied, “He is Abū Sahl, weak.” Al-Albānī added, “The ḥadīth has another supporting chain that is also weak.” Taken together, the three routes raise the report to the level of ḥasan, Allah willing.

Vocabulary of the ḥadīth
– al-faʾ: the faʾ in “fa-ayna” is a particle of resumption.
– ayna: a jussive conditional noun functioning as an adverb of place governed by what follows.
– mā: an extra particle (zāʾidah).
– tuwallū: the verb of the conditional clause, jussive with the final nūn omitted; the wāw is the subject pronoun.
– fa-thamma: the faʾ links the apodosis to the protasis, and “thamma” is an indeclinable adverb of place functioning as a fronted predicate linked to an omitted verb.