A report of comparable weakness is the one cited by Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, who wrote:

Al-Hārith ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Dhibāb related from al-Sāʾib ibn Yazīd who said, “During ʿUmar’s time the people stood for twenty-three rakʿahs.”

I say: This isnād is weak, because this Ibn Abī Dhibāb is unreliable in terms of memory. Ibn Abī Ḥātim records in al-Jarḥ wa al-Taʿdīl (1/2/80): “My father said: al-Dārāwardī narrates from him hadiths that are objectionable; he is not especially strong, though his ḥadith may be written down. Abū Zurʿah said: There is no harm in him.”

I further say: For that reason Mālik did not rely on him, as al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar notes in Tahdhīb; and in Taqrīb he remarks, “Truthful, but liable to err.”

Accordingly, a narrator of this standing is not admissible as proof, given the likelihood of his mistakes—especially when he contradicts a reliable, firmly established transmitter, namely Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf, the nephew of al-Sāʾib, who, as shown earlier, reported the number to be eleven rakʿahs.

Moreover, we do not even know whether the chain that reaches Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr is itself sound, for his book is not currently at our disposal so that we might consult it and examine the remainder of the isnād, assuming he recorded it at all. ⦗60⦘