When he prostrated, he placed his head at the spot between his hands. Then he sat upon his left foot … and gestured with his index finger …” This hadith was recorded by Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī, Aḥmad, and others with an authentic chain, and is included in Ṣaḥīḥ Abī Dāwūd (716–717), through the narrations of other leading scholars from a number of trustworthy narrators from ʿĀṣim, some of whom add details to the reports of others. The most complete accounts are those of Zāʾidah ibn Qudāmah and Bishr ibn al-Mufaḍḍal; the latter was trustworthy and highly reliable, and the wording is his.

Ibn Mājah also recorded from it the words: “I saw the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, praying, and he held his left hand with his right.” I say: if someone considers this sentence on its own, without knowing—or at least without recalling—that it is an abridgment of the hadith, he will understand from it that placing the hands in every standing position is prescribed, whether before bowing or after rising from it. This is mistaken, as the context of the hadith demonstrates. It explicitly states that the placing of the hands was only in the first standing position. This is even clearer in ʿĀṣim’s narration, for he mentioned the raising of the hands at the opening takbīr, then at bowing and at rising from it, saying of the latter two: “in the same manner.” Had Wāʾil retained in memory the placing of the hands after rising, he would have mentioned it as well—just as is apparent from his mentioning the raising of the hands three times before it.

However, when that sentence was separated from its proper place in the hadith, it gave the impression that the hands should be placed after rising from bowing. Consequently, some distinguished contemporary scholars adopted this view, though, to my knowledge, they had no precedent for it among the righteous predecessors. Further confirming what we have said is Ibn Idrīs’s abbreviated narration from ʿĀṣim: “I saw the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, when he pronounced the takbīr, hold his left hand with his right.”

Such misunderstanding, resulting from some narrators’ abridgment of a hadith or their failure to preserve it accurately, occurs often. In many of my lectures and lessons concerning this placement of the hands and its basis, I used to say: Soon a man may come forth with a new blameworthy innovation, relying on an unrestricted hadith without realizing that it is also restricted—namely, gesturing with the finger outside the tashahhud. For Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim contains two hadith concerning gesturing with it during the tashahhud: one from Ibn ʿUmar and the other from Ibn al-Zubayr, and each of them