I respond: He is an unknown narrator, exactly as Ibn al-Qayyim affirmed (1/81), and the same judgment is given by al-Bayhaqi according to what appears in al-Talkhis (3/472). Abu Hatim also declared— as his son reports in al-‘Ilal (1/188)—“This ḥadith is munkar (denounced).” The claim of al-Hakim and al-Dhahabi that it is “ṣaḥīḥ according to the criteria of the two Shaykhs (al-Bukhari and Muslim)” is itself unsound; no earlier critic said so, and no later authority has endorsed them. Ibn Hajar, in his notice on this very al-‘Alaʾ in Lisan al-Mizan, writes: “He was contradicted by ʿUmar b. Ḥafṣ b. Ghiyath—one of the most reliable transmitters from his father—who related it from his father, from al-Aʿmash, from Ibrahim, from ʿAlqama and others, as a mawquf report from ʿUmar. That is the preserved version.” I note that al-Tahawi (1/151) produced this latter chain from Ibrahim, from ʿAbd Allah’s disciples ʿAlqama and al-Aswad, who said: “We preserved from ʿUmar’s prayer practice that after bowing he would drop to his knees the way a camel collapses, placing his knees before his hands.” This isnad is sound. Besides, even if the ḥadith of Anas were authentic, it still does not explicitly state that the Prophet—peace be upon him—set his knees on the ground before his hands; it merely says the knees preceded the hands, which may refer to the movement, not the actual placement, as Ibn Hazm observed. Third ḥadith: Abu Hurayrah reported that when the Prophet—peace be upon him—prostrated, he would begin with his knees before his hands.