“Indeed, Allah has forbidden the earth to consume the bodies of the prophets.” This difficulty remained until I came across the hadith of Ibn Umar:
“When the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, began to put on weight, Tamim al-Dari said to him, ‘Shall I make a pulpit for you, Messenger of Allah, that will gather—or bear—your bones?’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ So he made for him a pulpit with two steps.”
Abu Dawud (1081) narrated it with a good chain of transmission meeting Muslim’s criteria.
From this I learned that they would use the word “bones” while intending the entire body, by using the part to refer to the whole—just as in Allah’s saying, “and the dawn recitation,” meaning the Fajr prayer.
Thus the difficulty was resolved, praise be to Allah. I have written this to clarify it.
- “Do not pray at sunrise or at sunset, for it rises and sets upon a horn of Satan. Pray as much as you wish between those times.”
Abu Ya‘la narrated it in his Musnad (200/2): Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Numayr narrated to us; Rawh narrated to us; Usamah ibn Zayd narrated to us, from Hafs ibn Ubayd Allah, from Anas ibn Malik, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said this.
I say: This is a good chain of transmission. All its narrators are trustworthy and are among the narrators of al-Bukhari and Muslim, apart from Usamah ibn Zayd al-Laythi. There has been criticism of him regarding his retention, but the established ruling is that his hadith is good when he does not contradict others; Muslim also cited him in corroboration.
The hadith is also corroborated by a report from Ali, attributed to the Prophet, with the wording:
“Do not pray after Asr, unless you pray while the sun is high.”