forbade the imam to stand higher while the congregation is behind him?’ Hudhayfah answered, ‘Did you not see me comply the moment you pulled me back?’

Its chain is sound and its transmitters are trustworthy. There is, however, some discussion about the precision of Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh’s memory; still, he is acceptable, as Ibn Abī Ḥātim relates from his father, and he cited this very ḥadīth for him. Al-Taqrīb states: ‘Truthful, reliable in the reports of the military expeditions; in his narrations from other than Ibn Isḥāq there is a slight weakness.’

I say: In any case he is not alone in transmitting it, for Abū Dāwūd and al-Ḥākim also recorded it through Yaʿlā ibn ʿUbayd, who related from al-Aʿmash a version similar to al-Ḥākim’s first wording, except that it says: ‘Do you not know that they used to forbid that?’ According to the principles of hadith study, this carries the ruling of being traced back to the Prophet, and thus has the same force as Ziyād’s explicit version.

Al-Ḥākim commented, ‘Sound according to the criteria of the two Shaykhs (al-Bukhārī and Muslim),’ and al-Dhahabī agreed. So it is, and Ibn Khuzaymah and Ibn Ḥibbān likewise authenticated it, as noted in al-Talkhīṣ. Al-Nawawī also declared it sound in al-Majmūʿ, attributing it to al-Shāfiʿī and to al-Bayhaqī as well.

Abū Dāwūd further produced it through another chain in similar form with the wording: ‘When a man leads the people in prayer, he must not stand in a place higher than theirs.’