al-Sakhtiyani and Kathir ibn Kathir ibn al-Muttalib ibn Abi Wada'ah—one adding material not found in the other’s version—from Sa'id ibn Jubayr, with the same report. The hadith master discussed the narrators’ discrepancies in its chain of transmission at length and concluded that they cause no harm. Whoever wishes to examine this may refer to Fath al-Bari (6/401–402, al-Salafiyyah edition).

1670 — “He forbade iq'a (sitting back on the heels) and tawarruk (sitting with one hip on the ground) in prayer.”

Ahmad (3/233) and al-Siraj in his Musnad (4/73/1) narrated it from Yahya ibn Ishaq al-Saylahini, who said: Hammad ibn Salamah narrated to us, from Qatadah, from Anas, as a prophetic report. Al-Bayhaqi said: “Yahya ibn Ishaq al-Saylahini alone narrated it from Hammad ibn Salamah.”

I say: Both are trustworthy narrators among those cited by Muslim; therefore, the chain is authentic. However, after narrating this hadith in his father’s Musnad, Abd Allah ibn Ahmad said: “My father had set this hadith aside.”

I say: Perhaps the reason for setting it aside was that both iq'a and tawarruk in prayer are established from the Prophet’s practice, peace and blessings be upon him, in two respective places: iq'a between the two prostrations, and tawarruk in the second tashahhud that is followed by the taslim, as explained in my book The Prophet’s Prayer Described. Yet it is possible to reconcile them by understanding this hadith to refer to iq'a and tawarruk in places other than the two just mentioned. This is how al-Nawawi and others reconciled the hadith, “He used to forbid the devil’s manner of sitting,” saying that it refers to the prohibited iq'a. Although that report has been criticized for a break in its chain, it is authentic due to its corroborating reports, as I have explained in Sahih Abi Dawud (752); among them is the hadith under discussion. And Allah knows best.

1671 — “Indeed, the deceased person will be resurrected in the clothes in which he died.”