and so on. Its chain of transmission is weak, and—as you can see—it belongs to the invocations for entering one’s house, not the mosque. For that reason Abū Dāwūd headed it with the title, “Chapter: What a person should say when he enters his house.” It therefore appears that Shaykh al-Islām slipped when he regarded it as one of the invocations for entering the mosque, and I have not found anyone else who said so. What he did quote, however, from Ibn Sīrīn is the report: “When the people entered the mosque they would invoke blessings and peace upon the Prophet ﷺ, saying, ‘In the name of Allah we enter, in the name of Allah we leave, and upon Allah we rely,’ and they would say the same when they departed.”
- One is required to pray two rakʿahs (units of prayer) before sitting, because the Prophet ﷺ said: “When any one of you enters the mosque, let him pray two rakʿahs before he sits,” and in another wording, “He should not sit until he has prayed two rakʿahs; thereafter he may sit, if he wishes, or go about his need.”
This ḥadith is narrated by Abū Qatādah al-Anṣārī. Mālik recorded it in the Muwaṭṭaʾ (1/176), and through his route Muḥammad (p. 150); likewise al-Bukhārī (1/426), Muslim (2/155), Abū Dāwūd (1/76), al-Nasāʾī (1/119), al-Tirmidhī (2/129), who said, “sound and good,” al-Dārimī (1/323), Ibn Mājah (1/317), al-Ṭaḥāwī (1/217), Aḥmad (5/295 and 303), and al-Khaṭīb (5/236 and 12/318), all of them through Mālik, from ʿĀmir ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr, from ʿAmr ibn Sulaym al-Zurqī, from him.
It is also corroborated from ʿĀmir by ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿīd in al-Bukhārī (3/37)—the second wording is his—and by Abū ʿUmays ʿUtbah ibn ʿAbd Allāh in Abū Dāwūd and Aḥmad (5/311), the additional phrase being from his narration.