“This report is extremely munkar (irregular). ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq said, ‘The ḥadīth is not strong,’ and Ibn al-Qaṭṭān remarked, ‘Ziyād and ʿUthmān are among those whose narrations must be held in abeyance.’ ”

Such is what they claimed, yet they offered no proof for their verdict, and I have found no earlier authority from the scholars of criticism and accreditation who preceded them in that view. On the contrary, as we have already shown, both men are judged reliable by Ibn Ḥibbān and by other early and later scholars—among them al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar, his teacher al-Haythamī, and others to be mentioned—and I see no basis whatsoever for the charge of irregularity that has been confidently asserted. None of the earlier or later critics, Ibn Ḥibbān included, nor al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar or his teacher al-Dhahabī, voiced such a judgment.

For all these reasons, and after seeking Allah’s guidance, I am convinced that the ḥadīth is sound and well established, and that those who have disparaged it possess no compelling evidence.

Granted, some have transmitted it in a form they considered defective. Abū Dāwūd recorded it (1/75)—and through his route al-Bayhaqī (2/441)—on the authority of Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, from Ziyād ibn Abī Sūdah, from Maymūnah, the Prophet’s freedwoman. The wording is abridged and does not contain the clause, “one prayer performed therein equals a thousand elsewhere”—its full text will appear later under “Etiquette of Mosques.” In this version Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz omits ʿUthmān ibn Abī Sūdah from the chain, thereby rendering it interrupted. Although Saʿīd was a trustworthy imām, he underwent confusion in his later years, so his solitary contradiction—such as we find here—cannot be relied upon. By contrast, Thawr, that is, Ibn Yazīd al-Ḥimṣī, is “trustworthy and firmly established,” as stated in al-Taqrīb and in al-Khilāṣah: “one of the reliable authorities.”