122—Abd al-Rahman ibn Umar informed us; Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Yaqub narrated to us; my grandfather, Yaqub ibn Shaybah, narrated to us; Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Numayr narrated to us; Qabisah narrated to us, from Sufyan, from al-A‘mash, from Abu Ammar, from Silah, from Abd Allah, who said:

“There will come people who will abandon from the sunnah something the size of this”—meaning, a finger joint—“and if you leave them, they will bring about the greatest calamity. Never was there a people of the Scripture but that the first thing they abandoned was the sunnah, and the last thing they abandoned ⦗103⦘ was the prayer. Were it not for their sense of shame, they would abandon the prayer.”