264 – Jābir (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet ﷺ said to a sick man who was praying on a cushion: the Prophet tossed it aside and said, “Pray on the ground if you can; if not, then pray by gesturing, and make your prostration lower than your bowing.” Al-Bayhaqī recorded it with a robust chain, though Abū Ḥātim judged it mawqūf (1).

Hadith grading
The report is sound in its mawqūf form. Al-Bayhaqī transmitted it through the route of al-Thawrī. Al-Bazzār observed, “No one is known to have narrated it from al-Thawrī except Abū Bakr al-Ḥanafī.” When Abū Ḥātim was asked about it he replied, “The correct version is mawqūf; attributing it directly to the Prophet is a mistake.” Al-Ṭabarānī also narrated it in al-Kabīr from Ṭāriq ibn Shihāb on the authority of Ibn ʿUmar, but that chain is weak.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Wāḥid authenticated it in al-Mukhtārah, and al-Haythamī said in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid, “Its narrators are those found in the Ṣaḥīḥ collections.”

I say: the report carries the ruling of being marfūʿ (traced back to the Prophet), for it legislates a matter that lies beyond personal opinion.

Vocabulary
• wisādah: a pillow or cushion placed under the head (pl. wisad).
• “He flung it away”: he cast it aside as a reproach to the man using it.
• fa-awmiʾ: an imperative derived from awmaʾa (to gesture); the verbal noun is imāʾ. Here it means to indicate both bowing and prostration by slight lowering, with the prostration lower than the bowing.