I say: Salamah ibn ʿAlqamah likewise transmitted it from Ibn Sīrīn but did not mention Ibn Shuqayq in the chain. Al-Bayhaqī produced this version, and Aḥmad also recorded it from him, on the authority of Ibn Sīrīn, who said: “I was informed that ʿĀʾishah said …”

Qatādah also related it from Ibn Sīrīn with the wording: “The Prophet ﷺ disliked praying in women’s cloaks.” Aḥmad recorded it with the isnād: “ʿAffān told us; Humām told us; Qatādah (reported) it.”

All the transmitters are trustworthy, the same calibre as those found in the Six Books, yet the report is mursal and therefore weak, especially with this anomalous phrasing. It is probably a narration conveyed merely according to meaning, and the meaning it conveys is unsound: the Prophet’s ﷺ avoidance of something does not by itself prove that the act is disliked—particularly once it has been established that he performed that very deed on several occasions, as is clear from the earlier ḥadiths of ʿĀʾishah, Maymūnah, and Ḥudhayfah. Those narrations affirm the practice, whereas ʿĀʾishah’s report here negates it; when an affirmative and a negative report conflict and cannot be reconciled, the affirmative takes precedence over the negative.

Reconciliation may nonetheless be possible. One could say that in this report ʿĀʾishah was only denying that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ habitually prayed wrapped in his wives’ garments, as implied by her use of the verb kāna (“he used to”). Kāna does not rule out that he occasionally did so. This explanation is reinforced by the fact that ʿĀʾishah herself narrated his doing so, as in the first ḥadith of this chapter, and even more explicitly in the passage cited earlier under the second issue, where she said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ and I would spend the night under a single inner garment (shiʿār) while I was menstruating …”