recommendation to abandon it, for the person who upholds it has simply not received this Sunnah; and if it has reached him yet he disregards it, the Sunnah itself overrides his position. Allah knows best.)
This is a sound statement that deserves to be preserved, for many shaykhs take a lax attitude toward numerous Sunan merely because a handful of scholars have differed over them. Ibn al-Qayyim records something similar in Zad al-Maʿād. His exact words are:
“Caution (iḥtiyāṭ) is only legislated when the Sunnah is unclear; once the Sunnah becomes clear, true caution is to follow it and leave whatever contradicts it. If one abandons the Sunnah out of ‘caution’ because of scholarly disagreement, then leaving what opposes it and adhering to the Sunnah is the safer—indeed, doubly safer—course. There are two kinds of caution: caution to avoid differing with the scholars, and caution to avoid differing with the Sunnah. The superiority of the latter over the former is obvious.”
8 – It is permissible to pray on anything spread upon the ground—such as a rug or the like—that people customarily sit on, provided it is clean, for the Prophet ﷺ used to pray on a khumrah (a small woven mat).
This ḥadith is authentically transmitted from a number of Companions:
- Maymunah, the wife of the Prophet ﷺ, through two separate chains. The first chain is related by al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī, al-Dāramī, Ibn Mājah, al-Bayhaqī, al-Ṭayālisī, and Aḥmad, through Sulaymān al-Shaybānī from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Shaddād from her.