and in the dawn (ṣubḥ) prayer, they would come to them even if they had to crawl.” Al-Bukhārī and Muslim (2-31), al-Nasāʾī (93), Aḥmad (2/278, 303, 374, 533) and Mālik (1/87-88) all transmitted it through Sumayy, the client of Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Sammān, from Abū Hurayrah, traced back to the Prophet.

Aḥmad adds—in a narration reported by ʿAbd al-Razzāq from Mālik—that he said to Mālik, “Is it disliked for us to say al-ʿatamah?” He replied, “That is exactly how the one who related it to me expressed it.”

The same usage is also firmly established from certain Companions: from Jābir ibn Samurah in Muslim (118), Aḥmad (5/89, 105) and others, and from Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh in Aḥmad (3/348) and elsewhere.

Ibn al-Qayyim (2/12), after quoting the report of Ibn ʿUmar and then this ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah, said:

“Some have claimed that this statement abrogates the earlier prohibition, while others held the opposite. The correct position differs from both views, for establishing a precise chronology is impossible and there is, in fact, no conflict between the two ḥadīths. The Prophet did not forbid using the name al-ʿatamah outright; he only forbade abandoning the name al-ʿishāʾ, the name by which Allah has called it in His Book. Should the label al-ʿatamah prevail to the point that the name al-ʿishāʾ is neglected, that is what is censured. But if one calls it al-ʿishāʾ while occasionally referring to it as al-ʿatamah, there is no harm. Allah knows best.

This reflects the Prophet’s ﷺ concern to safeguard the names by which Allah has designated the acts of worship, lest they be abandoned in favour of other terms—as later generations have done when they forsook the wording of the revealed texts and preferred newly-coined technical expressions, from which much corruption has arisen that only Allah fully knows.”