record his hadith. He used to narrate a hadith from ‘Ubaydah, although he had received it from Mansūr.’” (1) Such a mistake does not warrant rejecting a narrator’s hadith, for at most he mistakenly mentioned ‘Ubaydah instead of Mansūr. Which hadith scholar is entirely free of such errors?

Third: Anas reported that they had not previously performed qunūt, and that qunūt began when the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—performed it, supplicating against Ri‘l and Dhakwān. In the two Sahīh collections (2), ‘Abd al-‘Azīz ibn Suhayb narrated that Anas said:

“The Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—sent seventy men, known as the Quran reciters, on a mission. Two clans of Banū Sulaym, Ri‘l and Dhakwān, intercepted them at a well called Bi’r Ma‘ūnah. The men said, ‘By Allah, it is not you whom we have come for. We are merely passing through on a mission for the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace.’ Yet they killed them. The Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—then supplicated for a month during Fajr prayer. That was the beginning of qunūt; we had not previously performed qunūt (3).”

This indicates that performing qunūt regularly was not part of his practice—may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Anas’s statement, “That was the beginning of qunūt,” together with his statement, “He performed qunūt for a month, then discontinued it,” shows that the qunūt he affirmed was qunūt in response to calamities, whose duration he specified as one month. This was likewise the case when he performed qunūt in ‘Ishā’ prayer for a month, as reported in the two Sahīh collections (4), from Yahyā ibn Abī Kathīr, from Abū Salamah,