‘The sun was eclipsed during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, on the day his son Ibrāhīm died. The people said, “The sun has been eclipsed only because Ibrāhīm has died.” The Prophet ﷺ then stood and led the people in prayer, performing six bowings with four prostrations’—and the rest of the hadith.

Al-Bayhaqī said (1): Anyone who examines the event described in this hadith and that described in the hadith of Abū al-Zubayr will recognize that they concern the same event, and that the prayer reported was performed only once, on the day his son Ibrāhīm died.

He said (2): A discrepancy then arose between the report of ʿAbd al-Malik—meaning Ibn Abī Sulaymān—from ʿAtāʾ, from Jābir, and that of Hishām al-Dastawāʾī from Abū al-Zubayr, from Jābir, concerning the number of bowings in each unit of prayer. We found Hishām’s report preferable—meaning that there were only two bowings in each unit—because both he and Abū al-Zubayr were more accurate in preserving narrations than ʿAbd al-Malik. Moreover, the number of bowings in his report agrees with the reports of ʿUrwah and ʿAmrah (3) from ʿĀʾishah; Kathīr ibn ʿAbbās (4) and ʿAtāʾ ibn Yasār from Ibn ʿAbbās; Abū Salamah from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr; and also Yahyā ibn Sulaym and others. Other narrators differed from ʿAbd al-Malik in his report from ʿAtāʾ: Ibn Jurayj and Qatādah narrated it from ʿAtāʾ, from ʿUbayd ibn ʿUmayr, as six bowings with four prostrations. Thus, Hishām’s report from Abū al-Zubayr, from Jābir, concerning which no discrepancy arose and which is corroborated by many narrators = is preferable to the two reports of ʿAtāʾ, one of which he presented with a connected chain only