the anomalous reports that he ﷺ used to raise his hands while in prostration and when rising from it.

The scholar Ibn al-Qayyim—may Allah have mercy on him—said in Zād al-Hādī: “It has been related from him, meaning the Prophet ﷺ, that he would raise them—that is, his hands—when he went down for prostration. Some ḥadith specialists, such as Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm, even declared this sound. Yet this is a mistake, for nothing of the sort is authentically established from him at all. What deceived them is that the transmitter slipped, changing the words ‘He would pronounce takbīr at every lowering and rising’ to ‘He would raise his hands at every lowering and rising.’ The narrator is trustworthy, but they did not notice the cause of his slip and therefore approved his error.”

The author of al-Qāmūs, in his work Safar al-Saʿādah, likewise states: “What appears in some narrations—that he used to raise his hands at every lowering and rising—is due to inadvertence; the correct report is that he used to pronounce takbīr at every lowering and rising.” End quote.

Very weak ḥadiths have been transmitted about raising the hands during prostration and at every movement up and down. Among them is the report narrated by Imām Aḥmad and Ibn Mājah through Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh—from Ṣāliḥ ibn Kaysān—from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Aʿraj—from Abū Hurayrah, may Allah be pleased with him—stating that the Prophet ﷺ would raise his hands level with his shoulders when pronouncing the opening takbīr, when bowing, and when prostrating. Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh, however, is a point of contention.

Al-Nasāʾī said, “He is weak,” and Muslim records in the introduction to his Ṣaḥīḥ: ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dārimī told us, Zakariyyā ibn ʿAddī informed us, who said: Abū Isḥāq al-Fazārī said to me, “Do not write from Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh anything he narrates from the well-known narrators or from others.” At the same time, Aḥmad, Ibn Maʿīn, Duḥaym, al-Fallas, al-Bukhārī, al-Fasawī, and Ibn ʿAdī regarded him as reliable in what he transmits from the people of Syria,