Mālik ibn al-Ḥuwayrith who said: “He saw the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) praying, and whenever he was in an odd-numbered unit of his prayer he would not rise until he had sat upright.”

As for the proof adduced by the other three imams for omitting the resting sitting, it is the report recorded by al-Tirmidhī (288) from Abū Hurayrah: “The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) used to rise upon the fronts of his feet.”
Al-Tirmidhī remarked: “This is the practice observed by the people of knowledge.”
Abū al-Zinād said: “That is the sunnah.”
An-Nuʿmān ibn Abī ʿAyyāsh said: “I met more than one of the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) who would not sit for it.”
Imām Aḥmad said: “Most of the aḥādīth point to this, and among those from whom its omission is reported are ʿUmar, ʿAlī, Ibn ʿUmar, Ibn Masʿūd, and Ibn ʿAbbās.”

Ibn al-Qayyim stated: The jurists have differed over the resting sitting: is it one of the sunnahs of the prayer, or is it not, being practiced only by someone who needs it?—two opinions exist. The two reports of Abū Umāmah and Ibn ʿAjlān indicate that “he (peace and blessings be upon him) would rise upon the fronts of his feet.” Similar narrations have reached us from several Companions, and everyone else who described his prayer failed to mention this sitting; it appears only in the reports of Abū Ḥumayd and Mālik ibn al-Ḥuwayrith. Had it been his constant practice, every describer of his prayer would have mentioned it. The mere occurrence of the act does not prove it to be a sunnah of the prayer unless it is known that he performed it as a devotional practice to be emulated. But if it is assumed that he did it out of need, that cannot serve as evidence that it is a sunnah of the prayer. This is a precise delimitation of the issue.

Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn (Ibn Taymiyyah) held that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) adopted the sitting at the end of his life, when he had grown old, thereby reconciling the various reports.

Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Āl al-Shaykh said: The well-known position of the school is that it is not legislated; rather, it belongs to incidental causes, not to regular practice, so its performance stems from