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According to the view permitting a person with a nosebleed to resume his prayer, he remains subject to the rules and sanctity of prayer unless he ends it with the salutation, speech, or an act incompatible with prayer. This explains Ibn Habīb’s statement that if someone suffers a nosebleed while sitting midway through his prayer, bowing, or prostrating, his standing up from sitting or rising from bowing or prostration because of the nosebleed counts as part of his prayer.

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Scholars differed over whether a follower who leaves to wash off the blood, intending to resume his prayer, ceases to be subject to the imam’s authority. There are four opinions. The first is that he ceases to be subject to it until he returns, without qualification. The second is that he remains subject to it, without qualification. The third is that if the nosebleed occurs before he has prayed one rak‘ah with the imam, he ceases to be subject to his authority until he returns; but if it occurs after he has prayed one rak‘ah with him, he remains subject to it. The fourth is that if, after returning, he catches one rak‘ah of the imam’s prayer, he is deemed to have remained subject to the imam’s authority during his absence. If he does not catch one rak‘ah after returning, he is deemed not to have been subject to it during his absence. According to this opinion, therefore, the rulings governing the connection between his prayer and the imam’s during his absence depend on what subsequently unfolds: whether he catches one or more rak‘ahs of the imam’s prayer.

Those who hold that he ceases to be subject to the imam’s authority until he returns say that if the imam deliberately invalidates his own prayer before the follower returns, the follower’s prayer is not invalidated. If the follower speaks forgetfully, he performs the prostrations for forgetfulness after the salutation, and the imam does not bear that responsibility on his behalf. This differs from Ibn Habīb’s principle that such speech prevents him from resuming his prayer. If he thinks that the imam has finished praying and therefore completes his own prayer where he is, but subsequently discovers that, had he gone back, he would have caught the imam still praying, his prayer is valid. If the imam makes an error through forgetfulness, the follower incurs no obligation on account of it.

Those who hold that he remains subject to the imam’s authority say that if the imam deliberately invalidates his own prayer, the follower’s prayer is also invalidated. If the follower completes his prayer where he is, then subsequently discovers that, had he gone back, he would have caught the imam still praying, his prayer is not valid. If the imam makes an error through forgetfulness, the follower is bound by its consequences. If the follower himself speaks forgetfully, the imam bears that responsibility on his behalf, contrary to Ibn Habīb’s aforementioned principle. If, after the follower’s departure, the imam recites a verse of prostration