recitation, as Zayd ibn Thābit said, is a transmitted practice which later generations receive from earlier ones. Likewise, the various opening supplications in prayer, forms of the call to prayer and the call to commence it, ways of performing the prayer in times of fear, and other practices established from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, are all good and prescribed for those who know them. Someone who knows one form but does not know another may not abandon what he knows for what he does not know. Nor may he condemn or oppose someone who knows forms of these practices that he himself does not know. As the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said:

“Do not differ, for those before you differed and perished.”

As for irregular readings that depart from the written form of the Uthmānic Quranic manuscript, examples include the reading of Ibn Mas‘ūd and Abū al-Dardā’, may Allah be pleased with them both:

“By the night when it covers, and the day when it appears, and the male and the female,”

as is established in the two Sahīh collections; ‘Abdullāh’s reading:

“Then fasting for three consecutive days”;

and his reading:

“It was but a single cry,”

and similar readings. If these are established from some of the Companions, is it permissible to recite them in prayer? Scholars hold two views on this, both well-known positions reported from Imam Ahmad, with two positions also reported from Mālik.

The first is that this is permissible, because the Companions and the Successors used to recite these readings in prayer. The second is that it is not permissible, which is the view of most scholars, because these