who reported from Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb: “I heard ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd ...” So take heed, O people of insight!

What this researcher has done reminds me of what some Hanafis did with the authentic hadith of Abū Hurayrah: “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, led us in the noon or afternoon prayer and ended the prayer after two rakʿahs (units of prayer) ...” The hadith then mentions the account of Dhu al-Yadayn and how he, peace and blessings be upon him, completed the prayer after saying, “Dhu al-Yadayn has spoken the truth.” It was reported by al-Bukhārī and Muslim, and is included in Ṣaḥīḥ Abī Dāwūd (923). Some Hanafis declared it defective in support of their school, on the basis of al-Zuhrī’s statement that the person in the incident—meaning Dhu al-Yadayn—was martyred at Badr, whereas Abū Hurayrah embraced Islam in the year of Khaybar. Thus, they declared an authentic hadith defective on the basis of al-Zuhrī’s report with a double break; this is just like that! See Fatḥ al-Bārī (3/96–97). *

3328—“He would recite in the two rakʿahs (units of prayer) before Fajr (dawn), [and the two rakʿahs after Maghrib (sunset)], ‘Say, O disbelievers,’ and ‘Say: He is Allah, the One.’”

Al-Ṭabarānī recorded it in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr (12/424/13564): ʿAbdān ibn Aḥmad narrated to us: al-Faḍl ibn Sahl al-Aʿraj narrated to us: Abū al-Jawwāb al-Aḥwaṣ ibn Jawwāb narrated to us, from ʿAmmār ibn Ruzayq, from Abū Isḥāq, from Ibrāhīm ibn Muhājir, from Mujāhid, from Ibn ʿUmar, that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, used to ... the hadith, without the additional wording.

I say: ʿAbdān ibn Aḥmad—who was from al-Ahwāz—was trustworthy and a leading hadith master.

Imām al-Nasāʾī also narrated it in his Sunan (1/154), saying: “Al-Faḍl ibn Sahl informed us,” through the same chain, in a fuller version. Its wording is:

“I observed the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, twenty times reciting in the two rakʿahs after Maghrib and in the two rakʿahs before Fajr ...” Then he mentioned the two surahs.