Thus, by Allah Most High’s permission, the correct view becomes clear to you. There can therefore be no doubt that those mentioned previously deemed the hadith authentic, and Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah followed them. He said in Majmu' al-Fatawa (21/178): “It is an authentic hadith.” Al-Bayhaqi, al-Nawawi, and others who cited it without declaring it weak may likewise be counted among them. Rather, they presented it as counterevidence to the hadiths stipulating a time limit, upon which the majority of scholars relied. Al-Bayhaqi responded to it immediately afterward, saying: “We have narrated from Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) a stipulated time limit. Thus, either he retracted his view when reliable confirmation of the Prophet’s (peace and blessings be upon him) prescribed time limit reached him, or his statement that accords with the well-known sunnah is more deserving.” Al-Nawawi cited this in al-Majmu' (1/485) and approved of it. Had they found grounds to declare it weak, they would have had no need to reconcile it with the hadiths stipulating a time limit in the manner they mentioned.

Moreover, it may be reconciled in another way: Umar’s hadith may be understood to concern necessity and the inability to remove the leather socks because of one’s travelling companions or some other reason. This was the view adopted by Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah Most High have mercy on him) in his lengthy discussion concerning wiping over leather socks. Addressing the question of whether they must be free of holes, he said (21/177): “The hadiths concerning the prescribed time limit command wiping for one day and one night, and for three days and their nights. They contain no prohibition against exceeding this, except by way of an argument a contrario, and such an implication has no general scope. Thus, if one removes them after the prescribed period whenever that is possible, these hadiths are acted upon. In this way is understood the hadith of Uqbah ibn Amir: when he travelled from Damascus to Medina to bring the people the glad tidings of Damascus’s conquest, he wiped for a week without removing them. Umar said to him, ‘You have acted in accordance with the sunnah.’ It is an authentic hadith.”