the point that anyone who speaks between the iqāma and the prayer, or invalidates his ablution, need only renew his wudūʾ; the iqāma itself is not repeated. Moreover, whoever insists on distinguishing between “little” and “much” movement, or between brief and lengthy speech, must first produce evidence for the soundness of his claim and then clearly define the boundary between a small amount and a large—yet there is absolutely no way for him to do so).

By this Ibn Ḥazm is answering certain Ḥanafī scholars, and Shaykh al-Kashmīrī has admitted that drawing a precise line between “little” and “much” is difficult.

After writing the above, I discovered a fourth route for the ḥadīth that contains benefits not found in the other chains. Al-Bukhārī records it in al-Adab al-Mufrad, under the chapter “Generosity of Spirit”:

He said: Ibn Abī al-Aswad narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAmr narrated to us; Sihāmah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Aṣṣam narrated to us; I heard Anas ibn Mālik say: “The Prophet ﷺ was compassionate; no one ever approached him without receiving a promise, and if he possessed what the person sought he would fulfill it. The prayer was called, and a Bedouin came and grabbed hold of his cloak, saying, ‘Only a small part of my request remains, and I fear I will forget it.’ So he went with him until the man’s need was met, then he returned and prayed.”

This chain may well be judged ḥasan. Its narrators are the men used by al-Bukhārī in his Ṣaḥīḥ except for Sihāmah—spelled with two un-dotted letters, the second geminated—whom Ibn Ḥibbān declared trustworthy; Wakīʿ also transmitted from him, and al-Taqrīb lists him as “acceptable.” You can see that, as in the other routes, the man involved in the story is not named.