Second: their statement, “A camel’s knees are in its forelegs,” makes no sense and is not recognized by the authorities on the Arabic language (1). Knees are properly in the hind legs; if the two joints in its forelegs are called knees, this is only by extending the designation to them as well.
Third: if matters were as they claim, he would have said, “Let him kneel down as a camel does,” for the first parts of a camel to touch the ground are its forelegs.
The crux of the matter is that anyone who considers how a camel kneels down, and knows that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) forbade kneeling down like a camel, will recognize that the hadith of Wā’il ibn Hujr is the correct account. And Allah knows best.
It had occurred to me that the hadith of Abū Hurayrah was among those whose wording some narrators had reversed (2), and that it may have read, “Let him place his knees down before his hands,” just as some narrators reversed the hadith of ‘Ā’ishah and Ibn ‘Umar (3): “Bilāl gives the call to prayer at night, so eat and drink until Ibn Umm
(1) The same statement appears in al-Fayrūzābādī’s Safar al-Sa‘āda (The Journey of Happiness), p. 12, copied from the present work without acknowledgment. In fact, the view that a camel’s knees are in its forelegs is the standard view among authorities on the Arabic language. See al-Asma‘ī, Khalq al-Insān (The Creation of Man), p. 205, included in al-Kanz al-Lughawī (The Linguistic Treasury); al-Jāhiz, al-Hayawān (Animals), 2:355; and al-Hasan ibn Ahmad, Khalq al-Insān (The Creation of Man), pp. 144–145.
(2) The printed editions add after this: “wa-asluhu” (and its original wording was). It is as though “wa-la‘allahu” (and perhaps it was) had been corrupted in one copy into “wa-asluhu,” and the correct reading was then combined with its corrupted form.
(3) This is the reading in ك. In ص, a blank was left after the word “hadith,” both here and in the following passage. Someone later supplied here the reading adopted in the text, marking it “sahh” (correct), and supplied “Abī Hurayra” in the following passage. There are no blanks in ج or ق. However, someone added only “Ā’isha” here in ج, and “Abī Hurayra” in the following passage. In مب and ن, the reading is “the hadith of Ibn ‘Umar.”