Other leading scholars also narrated it, and it has been fully documented in Sifat al-Salah. I have included it here only because of the rarity of this source. The hadith provides clear evidence that it is permissible to prompt the imam when he falters in his recitation. As for the view found in some legal schools that a congregant wishing to prompt his imam must intend recitation, it is an opinion whose mere mention makes refuting it unnecessary.

2580 — “I came with my masters, intending to migrate. When we drew near to Medina, they entered the city, leaving me behind them. I was struck by severe hunger. Some people leaving Medina passed by me and said, ‘Why do you not enter Medina and obtain some fruit from its orchards?’ So I entered an orchard and cut off two clusters of dates. The owner of the orchard came upon me and brought me to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, informing him of my case. I was wearing two garments, so he asked me, ‘Which of them is better?’ I pointed to one of them, and he said, ‘Take it.’ He gave the other to the owner of the orchard and let me go.”

Ahmad recorded it (5/223): Rabi ibn Ibrahim narrated to us; Abd al-Rahman—meaning Ibn Ishaq—narrated to us: My father narrated to us, from his uncle and from Abu Bakr ibn Zayd ibn al-Muhajir, that they both heard Umayr, the freedman of Abu al-Lahm, who related it. I say: This is a good chain of transmission. All of its narrators are known and trustworthy, apart from Ishaq’s uncle, namely Ishaq ibn Abdullah ibn al-Harith ibn Kinana al-Amiri, whom I have not been able to identify. This does not impair the chain, since he is joined by Abu Bakr ibn Zayd ibn al-Muhajir, who is trustworthy and one of Muslim’s narrators. His name was Muhammad, and his kunyah was Abu Bakr, as al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar definitively stated in