for had there really been a sunnah prayer before it, he would have mentioned it in this very narration along with the post-adhan sunnah; that would have been the most fitting place to record it.

To sum up: the recommended practice for anyone who enters the mosque on Friday, at whatever time, is simply to offer as many voluntary units as he wishes—an open-ended supererogatory prayer, unrestricted by a set number or by any particular time—until the imam comes out. As for the idea that a person should remain seated when he first enters, whether after performing the two-rakʿah greeting of the mosque or even before it, and then rise to pray four rakʿahs when the mu’adhdhin gives the first adhan, this has no foundation in the Sunnah at all; it is an innovation, and its ruling is clear.

Someone might imagine that this standing and praying were already known in the time of ʿUthmān, and that one of the reasons he introduced the first adhan was to create a gap between it and the second adhan so that people could perform a pre-khutbah sunnah prayer. Yet there is absolutely no evidence for this; it is nothing but conjecture, and conjecture is of no avail against the truth, and