It has another corroborating report from Ibn ‘Abbas concerning what the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, would say when he rose to pray in the middle of the night. He mentioned it at the end of the report, but it does not contain the words: “and what You know better than I do”—except in a version recorded by al-Bukhari (7442), and likewise by Ibn Abi Shaybah in al-Musannaf (10/259–260).

2945 — “Do not fast on Friday unless it is one of a set of days you are fasting. As for not speaking to anyone, by my life, that you speak what is right and forbid what is wrong is better than remaining silent.”

It was recorded by Ahmad (5/224–225), al-Tabarani in al-Mu‘jam al-Kabir (2/31/1232), and al-Bayhaqi in al-Sunan (10/75–76), through several chains from ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Iyad ibn Laqit, who said: I heard Layla—the wife of Bashir—say: Bashir informed me that he asked the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, “Should I fast on Friday and not speak to anyone that day?” He said: and then mentioned it.

Al-Bayhaqi also recorded it through this route in al-Shu‘ab (6/92/7578), as did Ibn ‘Asakir in Tarikh Dimashq (3/382). I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission, and its narrators are trustworthy. Layla was, most likely, a female Companion. Bashir was Ibn al-Khasasiyyah, and Imam Ahmad included him in his Musnad. Ahmad and al-Tabarani (1230) then narrated—likewise al-Bukhari in al-Adab (830), through the same chain—from him that he said: “He had come to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, who said, ‘His name is Zahm,’ so the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, named him Bashir.”