3251—“Had you seen Iblis and me as I thrust out my hand, I kept choking him until I felt the coolness of his saliva between these two fingers of mine: the thumb and the one next to it. Were it not for the supplication of my brother Solomon, he would have been tied by morning to one of the mosque’s pillars, with the children of Medina playing with him. So whoever among you is able to ensure that no one comes between him and the direction of prayer, let him do so.”

Ahmad recorded it (3/82–83): Abu Ahmad narrated to us: Masarrah ibn Maʿbad narrated to us: Abu ʿUbayd, the companion of Sulayman, narrated to me, saying: I saw ʿAtaʾ ibn Yazid al-Laythi standing in prayer, wearing a black turban with one end hanging down behind him, and with his beard dyed yellow. I went to pass in front of him, but he prevented me and then said: Abu Saʿid al-Khudri narrated to me that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, stood and led the dawn prayer while he was behind him. He recited, but his recitation became confused; and when he had finished his prayer, he said: … Then he cited it.

I say: Its chain of transmission is good. Its narrators are trustworthy and among the narrators cited by Muslim, apart from Masarrah ibn Maʿbad, who was truthful but prone to errors, as stated in al-Taqrib.

Abu Dawud also narrated it through this route in abridged form (699), and it is included in my book Sahih Abu Dawud (696). It has corroborating reports, some of which Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah mentioned in Majmuʿ al-Fatawa (1/170). One of them is al-Nasaʾi’s abridged narration from ʿAʾishah concerning the incident of choking Satan. He said:

“Its chain of transmission meets al-Bukhari’s conditions, as Abu ʿAbdullah al-Maqdisi stated in his al-Mukhtarah, which is superior to al-Hakim’s Sahih.”

I say: One juristic point it contains is that using a prayer barrier is obligatory, even if one is in a place