Islamic lands, such as Kuwait, Morocco, Ta'if, and others. Here, too, they give the call to the Maghrib prayer five to ten minutes after the sun has set.

When I performed Umrah last Ramadan, I went up to the top floor of the building in Medina where I had visited one of our brothers, in order to observe the sunset while I was fasting. Yet the call to prayer was not given until thirteen minutes after it had set! In Jeddah, however, I went up a building in one of whose apartments a relative by marriage of mine lives; the sun had scarcely set before I heard the call to prayer. So I praised Allah for that.

This being so, once you understand the meaning of the hadith, and that it contains none of what Ibn Hibban alleged regarding a traveller's performing the Zuhr prayer before its time, his claim falls away: namely, that the hadith is rejected and that its narrator, Mishjah, cannot be used as evidence. This is especially so since one far more eminent than him in this discipline declared him trustworthy. Ibn Abi Hatim mentioned in his book (4/1/430) that Yahya ibn Ma'in said of him: “Trustworthy.” Abu Zur'ah said: “There is no harm in him.” Al-Mizan and al-Tahdhib also relate that Abu Dawud said: “Trustworthy.”

Further clarifying the meaning of the hadith, and showing that there is nothing objectionable in it, in addition to the preceding explanation, is what al-Bukhari narrated (1683) through Isra'il, from Abu Ishaq, from Abd al-Rahman ibn Yazid, from Ibn Mas'ud: that he arrived at Jam' (Muzdalifah) ... and performed the Fajr prayer when dawn broke, while one person was saying, “Dawn has broken,” and another was saying, “Dawn has not broken” ... the rest of the hadith.

Although Abu Ishaq became confused in his later years, his narration is a good corroborating report for the matter at hand. Furthermore, I only said concerning Ibn Hibban's chain of transmission, “if authentic ...,” because I did not know his teacher, Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Husayn. Ibn Hibban did narrate from him in his Sahih, and I found three hadiths narrated by him in Mawarid al-Zam'an fi Zawa'id Ibn Hibban (823, 2327, and 2360). In the second of them, he described him as “a grandson of al-Husayn ibn Isa,” that is, al-Husayn's grandson. Allah knows best.

I then found that al-Dhahabi included his biography in al-Siyar (14/405–406) and described him as: “Al-Masarjasi, the imam, hadith scholar, learned authority, trustworthy narrator ... the maternal grandson of al-Hasan ibn Isa ...”