and he did not command the man to recite the supplication that is actually transmitted from the Prophet ﷺ; rather, the words he did prescribe are not reported from the Prophet at all. A practice of that sort cannot establish a point of law, just as nothing related by a single Companion about commendable acts of worship, permissions, obligations, or prohibitions can be used as proof when no other Companion supports it and when what is authentically established from the Prophet ﷺ runs contrary to it. Accordingly, the act in question is not a sunnah that Muslims are bound to follow; at most it is an issue open to individual reasoning (ijtihād), one over which the community has differed, and so it must be referred back to Allah and His Messenger.

He then cited numerous examples of matters in which certain Companions acted on their own and were not followed—such as Ibn ʿUmar letting water run into his eyes during wuḍūʾ, and the like; consult them there.

He continued: If this is so, then it is clear that even if it were proven that ʿUthmān ibn Ḥunayf—or anyone else—treated it as a recommended practice to seek the Prophet’s intercession after his death, when the Prophet ﷺ is neither praying for the petitioner nor interceding on his behalf, we still know that ʿUmar and the senior Companions did not regard this as legislated after the Prophet’s passing, though it had been legislated during his lifetime. Indeed, while they used to appeal to his supplication and intercession when seeking rain during his life, once he died they no longer did so. Instead, ʿUmar, in the well-known sound supplication unanimously accepted by the scholars and uttered in the presence of the Emigrants and the Helpers during the famed “Year of Famine”—when drought became so severe that he swore he would not taste rich food until the people prospered—led the people in the prayer for rain and said: “O Allah, when drought afflicted us we would beseech You through our Prophet and You would send us rain; now we beseech You through the uncle of our Prophet, so send us rain.” They were then given rain. All the Companions approved this supplication; not one of them objected to it, despite its notoriety, making it one of the clearest instances of tacit consensus (ijmāʿ taqrīrī). Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān offered the same supplication during