188 – Abu Saʿīd al-Khudrī (may Allah be pleased with him) said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ stated, “Nothing breaks the prayer; repel whatever you can.” Reported by Abū Dāwūd, and its chain contains weakness. (1)

Hadith grading
The report is ḥasan. Some scholars judged it weak because it contains Mujālid ibn Saʿīd, whose memory was poor; he narrated it inconsistently—at times attributing it to the Prophet ﷺ and at other times halting it at the Companion, and the halted version is nearer to the truth. In addition, the first half of the report, even apart from its weakness, conflicts with the authentic ḥadith that a woman and the other things mentioned alongside her break the prayer. The second half, however, is sound in meaning and is corroborated by the wording of Abu Saʿīd found in al-Bukhārī and Muslim: “When one of you prays toward something that screens him from the people, and someone wishes to pass in front of him, let him push him back; if he refuses, then fight him, for he is but a devil.” This is al-Bukhārī’s wording.

This hadith also has further routes and supporting narrations that are mawqūf from ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Ibn ʿUmar, ʿĀʾishah, and Jābir. Among these supports are chains that are ṣaḥīḥ and others that are ḥasan, as Ibn Ḥajar clarified in al-Dirāyah. A few pages earlier the issue was discussed in detail, with the proofs cited for those who maintain that nothing nullifies the prayer, along with the supporting lines of transmission for this ḥadith that strengthen it and render it usable as evidence. For that reason Ibn al-Humām said in Fatḥ al-Qadīr: “It possesses routes that keep it from descending below the rank of ḥasan; indeed, the hadith of ʿĀʾishah in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, describing his ﷺ prayer while she was lying across his path, contradicts their claim that the prayer is invalidated.”