Al-Ṭaḥāwī (1/82) records it through Ibn Jurayj, who said: "ʿUthmān b. al-Sāʾib informed me, from Umm ʿAbd al-Malik b. Abī Maḥdhūrah, from him." The full wording has already been cited: “When you give the first call at dawn, say: ‘Prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep.’ ”

The report also comes by another route, related by al-Nasāʾī (1/106) and Aḥmad (3/408) via Sufyān, from Abū Jaʿfar, from Abū Sulaymān, from Abū Maḥdhūrah, who said: “I used to call the adhān for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and in the first dawn adhān I would say: ‘Come to success—prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep; Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest; there is no god but Allah.’ ”

This Abū Jaʿfar is an unknown narrator, as noted in al-Khilāṣah. It has been suggested that he is Abū Jaʿfar al-Farrāʾ, whom Abū Dāwūd deemed reliable; on that basis, Ibn Ḥazm appears to have ruled the report sound, as stated in al-Talkhīṣ (3/172). Al-Zarkashī, in Takh­rīj Aḥādīth al-Rāfiʿī, quotes: “Ibn Ḥazm said: its chain is sound,” as likewise cited in Sabil al-Salām (1/167).

I (the author) say: I have not, to this point, located Ibn Ḥazm’s explicit authentication of this report in his al-Muḥallā. What he does include there (3/151) is the isnād of Wakīʿ, from Sufyān al-Thawrī, from Abū Jaʿfar the muʾadhdhin, from Abū Sulaymān, from Abū Maḥdhūrah: when the caller reached “Come to success” in the dawn adhān he would say, “Prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep,” without Ibn Ḥazm expressly grading it.

Al-Shawkānī (2/32) writes: “Ibn Khuzaymah also declared it sound, and Baqī b. Makhlad transmitted it.”