except that the preserved report from Musab, on the authority of his father, concerns the hadith that abrogated tatbiq (placing the forearms against the sides in prostration). Something similar is noted by Ibn al-Qayyim and by the hadith master Ibn Hajar. That is everything I have been able to find of reports that contradict the sound sunnah; and I have observed that some of them are weaker than others. Ibn al-Qayyim—may Allah have mercy on him—forced the issue considerably: he tried to give these reports precedence over the hadith of Ibn Umar and devoted almost three pages of his Zad to the attempt. I have replied to him at length in Taʿliqat al-Jiyad, dismantling every argument he advanced one by one. Reproducing that here would be too long, so consult the mentioned work; it contains verifications seldom found elsewhere. Allah alone is the One whose help is sought. Al-Hazimi said: “Scholars have differed on this point. Some held that putting the hands on the ground before the knees is preferable; this was the view of Malik (1) and al-Awzaʿi, who said, ‘I found the people placing their hands down before their knees’ (2). Others disagreed and considered it preferable to place the knees before the hands. Among them were ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab, and it was also the position of Sufyan al-Thawri, al-Shafiʿi, Ahmad, Ishaq, Abu Hanifah and his companions.” I say: The evidence for this latter group is the aforementioned ahadith. Had they been sound, we would have accepted the permissibility of both practices, as is related from Malik and Ahmad (see Fath). Since they are not sound, the decisive proof lies with the first group, which is also the view of the hadith specialists—as stated by Ibn Abi Dawud and transmitted in Zad (1/82)—and their evidence is the present hadith. (1) A similar statement is reported from Ahmad; see Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Tahqiq, 2/208. (2) Related by al-Marwazi in his Masail (1/147/1) with a sound chain from Imam al-Awzaʿi.