and he is not considered reliable; indeed, he is unknown. Al-Dhahabī, in al-Mīzān, quoted this very report for him and then said:

“Ibn al-Qaṭṭān stated: ‘He is known only through this narration. Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar transmitted it from him, and I know of no weakness in Ismāʿīl—but the narrator himself is obscure.’”

Those are al-Dhahabī’s words. Accordingly, the man is majhūl, and a ḥadīth transmitted by such a narrator cannot be deemed established. When al-Tirmidhī, after citing the report, commented, “a ḥasan ḥadīth,” he was referring to the substance of the tradition, not to every wording that has come down in its various versions. Proof of this is that a group of dependable transmitters related the ḥadīth from ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā—the father of Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā—yet none of them mentioned the iqāma. They are Dāwūd ibn Qays, Muḥammad ibn ʿAjlān, Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr, Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥa, and Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq. All five reported from ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā, and not one included the iqāma, as already noted. Their various chains will be documented later under “Book of Prayer: Facing the Qibla.”

I subsequently came across the version of Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā in the Musnad of al-Ṭiyālisī: “Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar al-Madanī narrated to us; Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī ibn Khallād informed me,” and so forth—yet even here the iqāma is absent. His rendition therefore concurs with that of the reliable transmitters. All of this demonstrates that the extra clause about the iqāma is not authentic. Let no one be misled by its appearance in some versions, by al-Tirmidhī’s grading of the ḥadīth as ḥasan, or by Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar’s silence about it in Fatḥ al-Bārī. This, as far as I can tell, is a level of verification rarely found in any book. Allah alone inspires what is right.