Ismāʿīl narrated to us: “ʿUthmān al-Battī related to us, from ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Salamah, from his father, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ forbade the ‘crow’s peck’, the ‘predator’s couch’, and for a man to make a fixed place for himself in the prayer just as a camel fixes its spot.”

All the men in its chain are trustworthy except this ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, who is classed as unknown, as noted in al-Taqrīb.

Concerning the phrase “and that a man make a fixed place in the mosque as a camel does,” al-Khattābī said in al-Maʿālim—and Ibn al-Athīr followed him in al-Nihāya:

“There are two possible meanings:

1. A man becomes attached to a particular spot in the mosque and prays nowhere else, like a camel that, when it returns from watering, goes only to a soft patch that it has become accustomed to and made its resting place, kneeling nowhere else.
2. When intending to prostrate, he descends onto his knees before his hands, in the manner of a camel kneeling on the spot it has habituated, and he should not drop into his prostration but rather bend his knees until he sets them on the ground calmly and unhurriedly.”

I comment: Ibn al-Athīr omits the words “and that he should not drop…,” perhaps because they diverge from the immediately preceding clause in which al-Khattābī said, “that he descend upon his knees… like a camel,” whereas here he says, “so he bends his knees…,” and so forth.

What seems apparent is that al-Khattābī, may Allah have mercy on him, does not regard the mere placing of the knees before the hands as the issue, but rather the thump produced when the knees strike the ground, like the sound heard from a camel. If one sets them down quietly and gently, without any noise, then—according to the second interpretation—he is no longer imitating an animal, and the prohibition would not apply to him. Yet in practice this is impossible, namely, to place them