what preceded it. Nor did Shaykh al-Aʿẓamī notice this in his annotation on this passage in Kashf al-Astār!

Note: As for the phrase “toward the man,” I understand this word to mean his purpose and direction—that is, toward goodness and worship: he instructed him to perform voluntary prayer. Al-Haythamī indicated this by including the hadith under “The Chapter on Night Prayer.” This escaped some annotators and writers. Thus, a footnote in History of Baghdad reads: “Thus it stands in the original!” The annotator of al-Ḥilyah came close to the correct view, saying: “Thus it appears in both originals; perhaps he means the man’s purpose.”

The furthest from the truth, however, was the author of the Encyclopedia of the Indices of Prophetic Hadith. In two different places (6/38), he printed it as “bukhūr” (incense), with a b followed by kh, attributing it to four of the sources mentioned above: al-Bukhārī, al-Ḥilyah, al-Majmaʿ, and al-Khaṭīb—yet it appears correctly in all of them! He himself thus altered it to “bukhūr,” giving the impression that this was the correct reading!

Moreover, I have not found the hadith in the recently printed Mukhtaṣar Zawāʾid al-Bazzār by al-Ḥāfiẓ, nor in the photocopy in my possession, so that we might see whether he added anything in correction of his shaykh al-Haythamī’s preceding remarks. I therefore do not know whether it was among what he overlooked, or whether it was omitted by the copyist or the printer.

2954 — “Whenever he performed the Fajr prayer, he would sit cross-legged in his place until the sun rose.”

Abū Dāwūd (4850) transmitted it through Abū Dāwūd al-Ḥaḍarī, who said: Sufyān al-Thawrī narrated to us from Simāk ibn Ḥarb, from Jābir ibn Samurah, who said: He then mentioned it.