The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to pray on a khumra (a small woven mat). He then said: “Aishah, remove this hasir (mat) from us; I am afraid it may tempt the people.” Reported by Ahmad, and its chain is sound according to the criteria of the six canonical compilers, as noted earlier. Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar states in Fath al-Bari (1/390) that al-Bukhari narrated—through the route of Abu Salamah from Aishah—that the Prophet ﷺ had a hasir which he would spread out and pray on. I add: the report is found in al-Bukhari (2/170) from al-Maqburi, from Abu Salamah, but it does not explicitly say that he prayed on it; its wording is: “He had a hasir which he spread out in the daytime and folded up at night, and some people gathered around him and prayed behind him.” (1) The narration shows that laying a mat on the ground can be described with the verb labsa (“to wear”). On that basis some jurists infer the prohibition of reclining on silk, since the general ban concerns “wearing” silk. The objection that a person who swears, “I will not wear silk,” is not perjured by merely sitting on it is dismissed, because oaths are judged by customary usage. See Fath al-Bari. (2) A report from Anas b. Malik ﵁ states: “My grandmother Mulaykah invited the Messenger of Allah ﷺ to a meal, and he ate from it. He then said, ‘Rise, that I may pray for you.’ I went to a hasir of ours that had blackened from long use, sprinkled it with water, and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ stood upon it. I and an orphan formed a row behind him, and the elderly woman stood behind us, and he led us in prayer.” (1) Both Sahih collections contain an explicit prohibition against sitting on silk, so do not be misled by senior scholars who permit it!