One could tell that the Prophet ﷺ was reciting during the Dhuhr prayer from the movement of his beard. Al-Haythami remarks (2/115): “Ahmad transmitted it and all the men in its chain are trustworthy.” I add: the isnad is sound; its transmitters are the same as those used by Muslim except for Abu al-Za‘ra—‘Amr ibn ‘Amr al-Jushami—who is himself reliable, as stated in al-Taqrib. Al-Tabarani also recorded it in al-Mu‘jam al-Kabir, in the Musnad of ‘Abd Allah ibn Mas‘ud, through the route of Zayd ibn al-Harish: ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi narrated to us, from Sufyan, from Abu al-Za‘ra, from Abu al-Ahwas, from ‘Abd Allah, adding the words: “and during ‘Asr.” Regarding Zayd ibn al-Harish, Ibn Hajar notes in Lisan al-Mizan that Ibn Hibban, in al-Thiqat, said “he sometimes errs,” while Ibn al-Qattan deemed him “of unknown standing.” Ibn Abi Hatim lists among those who narrated from him Ibrahim ibn Yusuf al-Hisanjani. I would add that others who took hadith from him include ‘Abdan ibn Ahmad al-Ahwazi—the transmitter of this very report—his son Ahmad ibn Zayd, and Ja‘far ibn Ma‘dan al-Ahwazi, the last two being among al-Tabarani’s teachers in his Mu‘jam al-Saghir (pp. 13, 67). The same point was narrated by the Companion Zayd ibn Thabit. Al-Bukhari relates it in his Juz (no. 25), Ahmad (5/182, 186), and al-Tabarani in al-Kabir, through Kathir ibn Zayd from al-Muttalib ibn ‘Abd Allah, who said: “People differed about whether Qur’an is recited in Dhuhr and ‘Asr, so they sent to Kharija ibn Zayd. He replied: ‘My father said that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to stand for a long time and move his lips, and I realised that this could only be because he was reciting; so I do the same.’” This chain is hasan in view of the preceding evidence, though much has been said about Kathir ibn Zayd.