Al-Hafiz attributes the report to Ibn Abi Shaybah and adds: “Ibn Abd al-Barr declared it sound.” I reply: it is defective, first because the chain is broken—as noted earlier—and second because the text itself is unstable. Hisham related it from Muhammad in the wording already quoted, and Khalid al-Hadda followed him (Ahmad, 6/184), but Khalid’s version reaches us through Ali b. Asim, whose unreliable memory renders him weak. Ayub, on the other hand, reports from Muhammad with a different wording: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to shorten the two rakahs.” She (Aisha) added, “I think he would recite something like: ‘Qul ya ayyuhal-kafirun’ and ‘Qul huwa Allahu ahad.’ ” Ahmad also records this path (6/183) through Abd al-Wahhab al-Thaqafi from Ayub. There are two points of divergence: 1. Aisha did not name the surahs outright; she merely suggested them, because the recitation was done silently. 2. She did not state this with certainty but only as conjecture. Allah knows best. The earlier hadiths suffice and already show the recommendation of reciting these two surahs in the two rakahs. Ibn Nasr (pp. 31, 34) transmits from Abd al-Rahman b. Yazid: “They considered it preferable to recite in the two rakahs after Maghrib and the two rakahs before Fajr: ‘Qul ya ayyuhal-kafirun’ and ‘Qul huwa Allahu ahad.’ ” This Abd al-Rahman is Abd al-Rahman al-Nakhai al-Kufi, a trustworthy Successor (tabi‘i). Al-Nawawi (3/385) remarks: “Al-Shafi‘i explicitly recommended, in al-Buwayti, reciting these two surahs in those two rakahs.”