The Shāfiʿī school adduce, in support of their position, the ḥadīth of Zayd ibn Thābit in which he said:
“I was reciting the Qur’an to the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—so I recited Sūrat al-Ḥajj, and he did not prostrate, nor did we.”
They also cite the report from him—peace and blessings be upon him—stating that
“he did not prostrate in the Mufaṣṣal,”
alongside another report that
“he did prostrate in it.”
Reconciling these narrations, they argue, shows that the prostration cannot be obligatory, for each transmitter simply conveyed what he observed: those who reported that he prostrated, and those who reported that he did not.
Abū Ḥanīfah, by contrast, holds fast to the principle that every command—or any report that assumes the force of a command—is to be understood as conveying obligation.
Abū al-Maʿālī objected, saying: “Abū Ḥanīfah’s reliance on the bare commands to prostrate is groundless, for making prostration obligatory in absolute terms does not entail its obligatoriness in the qualified circumstance—namely, while reciting a verse of prostration. Were the matter as Abū Ḥanīfah claims, the prayer itself would be compulsory upon reciting any verse that commands prayer; and since that is not so, prostration is likewise not rendered obligatory merely by reciting the verse that commands it.”
Abū Ḥanīfah could respond: “The Muslims are unanimously agreed that the reports enjoining prostration upon reciting the Qur’an carry the force of a command in most of their contexts. Thus the command to prostrate appears in both a restricted form—tied to recitation—and an unrestricted form; the unrestricted must therefore be interpreted in light of the restricted. Nor is the command to prostrate comparable to the command to pray, for the obligation of the prayer is bound by additional conditions. Moreover, the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—actually performed this prostration, thereby clarifying that the intended scope of the command is prostration upon recitation. The obligatory force inherent in the command must therefore be retained.”
As for the number of prostration-verses in the Qur’an (ʿazāʾim al-sujūd), Mālik said in the Muwaṭṭaʾ: “Our accepted practice is that there are eleven such prostrations in the Qur’an, none of which occur in the Mufaṣṣal.”
His companions enumerate them as follows:
- The closing passage of al-Aʿrāf;
- In al-Raʿd, at His words: “by morning and evening” (Q 7:205);
- In al-Naḥl, at His words: “and they do what they are commanded” (Q 16:50);
- In Banī Isrāʾīl, at His words