she said: “The Messenger of Allah would open the prayer with the takbir and begin the recitation with: al-hamdu lillahi rabbi l-alamin (All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the worlds). When he went into ruku he neither raised his head high nor lowered it excessively, but kept it between the two positions. When he rose from ruku he would not prostrate until he had stood up straight, and when he lifted his head from prostration he would not prostrate again until he had sat upright. In every two rakʿahs he would recite the tashahhud, he would spread out his left foot and keep his right foot erect, and he forbade ʿuqbat—or, in another wording, ʿaqib—al-shaytan (the devil’s way of sitting). He also forbade a man to lay his forearms on the ground like a beast. He concluded the prayer with the taslim.” Narrated by Muslim 2/54; Abu ʿAwana 2/94, 96, 164, 189, 222 (in separate places); Abu Dawud 1/125; al-Bayhaqi 2/113, 172; al-Tayalisi 217; and Ahmad 6/31, 194, through the chain of Budayl ibn Maysarah al-ʿUqayli from Abu al-Jawzaʾ, from her. It was also reported by al-Darimi 1/281, Ibn Majah 1/271, and by Ahmad in another narration 6/281 up to her words “al-hamdu lillahi rabbi l-alamin”; the first of these two versions adds: “and he concluded it with the taslim.” Although the report is found in Sahih Muslim, it has been challenged on account of a broken chain: in at-Talkhis 3/266 Ibn Hajar writes, “Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: it is mursal, for Abu al-Jawzaʾ did not hear from ʿAʾishah.” Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s own wording in his epistle al-Insaf fi-ma bayna l-ʿulamaʾ min al-ikhtilaf (p. 9) is: “All the transmitters in this isnad are reliable, yet the hadith scholars say that Abu al-Jawzaʾ is not known to have heard from ʿAʾishah, so his narration from her is mursal.” Al-Bukhari hinted at the same point in his biographical notice on Abu al-Jawzaʾ.