2815 — “In Mecca, he would pray two rak‘ahs—that is, the obligatory prayers. Then, when he came to Medina and the prayer was prescribed as four and three rak‘ahs, he prayed accordingly, while retaining the two rak‘ahs he had prayed in Mecca as the full prayer for the traveller.”

Al-Ṭayālisī recorded it in his Musnad (1535): Ḥabīb ibn Yazīd al-Anmāṭī narrated to us; he said: ‘Amr ibn Hurm narrated to us, from Jābir ibn Zayd, who said: Aisha said …’ and he mentioned it as a report traced back to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). I say: This chain of transmission is sound; its narrators are reliable and are narrators of Muslim, apart from this al-Anmāṭī, concerning whom they differed. Al-Dhahabī said in al-Kāshif: “There is some weakness in him.” Al-Ḥāfiẓ said: “He is truthful, but makes mistakes.” I say: A narrator of this standing has reports that are graded good, especially when they are corroborated. This hadith has also come through another route from Aisha with similar wording, and it is the one mentioned before it.

It has a third route from her, in which she said: “When prayer was first prescribed for the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), it was two rak‘ahs each …” The rest of the hadith is similar, and it includes: “Then Allah made the Dhuhr and Asr prayers complete …” and the rest of the hadith. Aḥmad recorded it (6/272) with a good chain.

It is among the proofs establishing the invalidity of the view of those who impugned Aisha’s hadith in the two Ṣaḥīḥs by claiming that it is merely a statement of Aisha rather than a Prophetic report. Among them is Shaykh Abdullah al-Ghumārī, whose claim was refuted in detail in the preceding hadith, in a manner that will delight the readers who love the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him).