Addenda
- At the end of hadith 32, and at the end of the second point:
I subsequently came across an excellent study by one of our brothers in Mecca—may Allah bless him—in which he defended this evident sunnah, in his treatise that he presented to me, Supplementary Notes on Some Issues of Prayer (pp. 41–42). Refer to it, and you will gain further knowledge and benefit from it, Allah Most High willing.
- At the end of hadith 36:
It then became clear to me that Ibn al-Qattan’s authentication of the hadith through the first chain from Ibn ‘Abbas is flawed by anomaly. The same applies to the third chain from him, for the mention of the phrase concerning the ears in it is likewise anomalous. I benefited in all of this from the critical study undertaken by the eminent brother Mashhur Hasan in his annotations to al-Bayhaqi’s al-Khilafiyyat (1/366–393). May Allah facilitate its complete publication and, by His favor and generosity, benefit its readers through it.
However, I would have wished that the eminent brother had provided his readers, after such strenuous effort and severe toil in tracing the hadith’s chains, with a useful conclusion: namely, an explanation of the hadith’s rank. For that is the crux of hadith documentation. It is established in the science of hadith terminology that a weak hadith may be strengthened by a multiplicity of chains, subject to the well-known condition stated there. Thus, the question now presents itself—as is said in our times: does the hadith remain weak, as the individual chains indicate and as is suggested by the practice of the Imams al-Daraqutni and al-Bayhaqi? Or does the totality of its chains raise it above weakness and elevate it to the level at which it may be cited as evidence, even if only to the rank of a hadith graded good due to corroboration?