and you will see that it is of no evidentiary value and cannot be used as proof. As for al-Sarakhsi’s assertion – which others have simply repeated – that the invalidation of the prayer is the position of a number of the Companions (1), one may well ask: which Companion ever said such a thing? (1) A comparable exaggeration appears in the words of the author of al-Hidaya: “The follower does not recite behind the imam, and the Companions are unanimously agreed on this.” Any fair-minded reader must be astonished at such language and hyperbole, for it points to one of two failings: (a) partisanship so strong that it blinds and deafens, or (b) ignorance of the hadith corpus and failure to study it – even the school-based collections such as al-Tahawi’s Sharh Maani al-Athar, which records the very disagreement of the Companions on this question. Perhaps this is what prompted some of our teachers to say, “Hadith scholarship is the trade of the penniless!” Whichever of the two causes it may be, the matter is grave when it is found in the works of those imams who serve as models for later generations. Equally strange is what the author of al-Inaya (the commentary on al-Hidaya) writes: “Concerning his statement ‘and the Companions are unanimously agreed,’ it has been objected that some of them hold the recitation of al-Fatiha to be obligatory. The reply was that the intended meaning is the agreement of most of the Companions, for it is reported from eighty leading Companions that the follower is forbidden to recite behind the imam.” He then adds, “This response is untenable, for that number does not constitute a majority of the Companions. What is astonishing is the specification of this precise number with no supporting evidence. Where is the text for it? And who met that many Companions and heard from them their view on the matter?!” Al-Ayni and others repeat the same claim. Abu al-Hasanat (p. 160) comments: “Statements like this, even when cited by major jurists, usually come from men who are not hadith specialists. They do not back them up with chains of transmission acceptable in religion, nor do they attribute them to recognized compilers. How, then, can such claims be relied upon in establishing a religious ruling?!” Along the same lines, Shaykh Ali al-Qari says in his Mawduat (p. 85): “The hadith, ‘Whoever makes up an obligatory prayer on the last Friday of Ramadan, that act will compensate for every obligatory prayer he has missed during his life up to seventy years,’ is categorically baseless, for it contradicts consensus: no act of worship can substitute for years of missed prayers. No weight is to be given to its citation in al-Nihaya or the other commentators on al-Hidaya, for they are not hadith scholars and have not traced the report back to any recognized compiler.”