There is, therefore, serious doubt about the authenticity of this report. Al-Haythami says in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid:
“Al-Ṭabarānī transmitted it through three shaykhs: Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān al-Nawfalī, Aḥmad ibn Rushdīn al-Miṣrī, and Aḥmad ibn Dāwūd al-Makkī. Aḥmad ibn Rushdīn is weak, the other two are unknown to me, while the remainder of the chain consists of transmitters found in the Ṣaḥīḥ collections.”
I am strongly inclined to rule the ḥadīth unsound, for it conveys the same notion uttered by the Jews upon whom anger was incurred: “God created the heavens and the earth in six days, then He rested on the seventh,” meaning Saturday, which they call the day of rest. Allah the Exalted refuted them in several verses, saying, “We certainly created the heavens and the earth and everything between them in six days, and no weariness touched Us” (Qāf 50:38).
It is far more plausible that the report originated in Israelite lore that seeped into Muslim circles through some People of the Book. A few narrators then mistakenly raised it to the Prophet ﷺ, as occurs in the Musnad of Aḥmad, but this is an error, as al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr and others have shown in their commentaries.
- Sleeping or taking a midday rest in the mosque is permissible for any man who needs to do so—even if he is not a traveller—provided he does not turn the mosque into a habitual lodging. Several ḥadīths address this:
a) From ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them both): when he was a young, unmarried man with no household, he used to sleep in the Prophet’s ﷺ mosque