He asked, “Is it for trade?” I replied, “No; rather, I intended to pray there.” Whereupon he mentioned the hadith. This is al-Tahawi’s wording, while the addition is from the others. Their wording is: “A prayer here is better than a thousand prayers there.”

Al-Haythami cited it in al-Majmaʿ (4/5) with the wording: “Prayer here”—and he gestured toward Mecca—“is better than a thousand prayers”—and he gestured with his hand toward Syria.” Al-Haythami said: “It was narrated by Ahmad and al-Tabarani in al-Kabir, who said: ...”

I say: He then cited the previously mentioned wording of al-Tabarani, which contains none of the gesture that he attributed to Ahmad’s narration. I searched extensively for it in his Musnad, employing every index compiled for the Musnad that is known today, but I was unable to locate it. I even supposed that, for some reason, he had cited it outside the Musnad section of its Companion, al-Arqam. So I reviewed all the hadiths concerning the virtue of prayer in his mosque, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, in the Musnads of the Companions who narrated them, such as Abu Hurayrah, Ibn Umar, and others, but I did not find it.

It is possible that it occurs in one of the manuscript copies of the Musnad. I have been informed by some of our brothers engaged in this noble field of knowledge that he found an unpublished portion of it; perhaps the hadith is in it. If it is found, it is most likely through this ʿAṭṭaf. Then my supposition proved correct, for Brother Ali al-Halabi—may Allah reward him well—informed me by telephone that al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar included the hadith in Atraf al-Musnad (1/48/84, edited by Brother Samir): “ʿIsam ibn Khalid narrated to us, from ʿAṭṭaf ibn Khalid, from Yahya ibn عمران, from”