—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—prayed bare-headed although he possessed something with which to cover himself; for one who has a covering this is deemed makruh (disliked), whereas for one who does not, it is not. He, peace be upon him, indicated that the point here is people’s financial constraint and some worshippers’ inability to obtain two garments; this, in turn, shows that the more complete practice is to pray in two garments. For that reason ʿUmar, may Allah be pleased with him, said: “When Allah grants you ease, then act with ease.” On this there is no disagreement, as Qadi ʿIyad and others have explicitly stated. (Additional note) Shaykh Ahmad Shakir writes in his commentary on al-Tirmidhi (2/168–169)—after citing this hadith together with the earlier report of Jabir: “The jurists have derived many subsidiary rulings here, and you will find scholars castigating anyone who prays in some of his clothes and leaves others aside, especially the one who prays bare-headed, claiming that it is makruh; yet they possess no evidence for this. Obviously, a person who prays in a single garment—whether wrapping it around himself or tying it as a lower cloth—will not have a turban on his head, and, to our knowledge, no hadith at all states that praying bare-headed is disliked.” I say: Al-Shaʿrani reports in Kashf al-Ghumma (1/70): “The Prophet ﷺ used to command covering the head in prayer with a turban or a cap, forbid praying with the head uncovered, and say, ‘When you come to the mosques, come muʿassabīn.’ The word muʿassabīn means: wearing a turban.” End quote. These are peculiar reports for which we have found no basis in any of the sources available to us. Shaʿrani’s book abounds in such oddities and in weak, unsound hadiths; he combined therein what is authentic with what is not of the Prophet’s sayings and actions in his sīra. Nevertheless, Shaykh Ahmad Shakir’s conclusion—that uncovering the head in prayer is not makruh, reasoning from the permissibility of praying in a single garment—is not sound. As we have already shown, praying in two garments is preferable for anyone who can manage it; whoever neglects that and prays in only one garment falls into makruh. The hadith of Abu Hurayra grants a permissibility that is less than optimal and conditional, and likewise the one who