Fifth: There is no doubt that this addition is baseless and must not be attributed to Ibn Masud—may Allah be pleased with him—because, as already shown, its chain of transmission is broken and it conflicts with what is known of his zeal for strict adherence to the sunnah and his sharp censure of innovation. Among the proofs is his objection to anyone who inserted into the tashahhud the phrase waḥdahu la sharika lahu (He alone, without partner), as will be mentioned below (p. 903). He used to say: “Economy in a sunnah is better than exertion in a bidʿah (innovation).” Sixth: Al-Ghumari claims that al-Bayhaqi narrated in his Sunan from Aishah: “This was the Prophet’s tashahhud: al-taḥiyyatu lillah …” to the end, and he cites al-Nawawi’s remark: “Its isnad is good, and it shows that the Prophet’s tashahhud matches ours; this is a valuable point.” I respond: As for the isnad’s being “good,” it is not, because it contains Salih ibn Muhammad ibn Salih al-Tammar, whose reliability is unknown. Al-Bukhari mentions him in al-Tarikh (2/2/291) and quotes a chain in which he narrates from his father, from Saad ibn Ibrahim, from Amir ibn Saad, from his father, that the Prophet spoke about Saad ibn Muadh. Al-Bukhari then comments: “Shuʿbah narrated it differently—from Saad, from Abu Umamah ibn Sahl, from Abu Saʿid, from the Prophet—and that version is sounder.” He offers neither praise nor criticism of Salih. The disputed wording could stem either from Salih or from his father, Muhammad ibn Salih, who is trustworthy but of questionable memory. In any case, Salih is unknown, and an isnad containing such a narrator cannot be graded good—especially since Hafiz Ibn Hajar, following al-Daraqutni, has ruled this hadith of Aishah mawquf (stopping with her). See al-Talkhis (3/514). As for al-Nawawi’s statement that it is “the same as our tashahhud,” he is referring to the Shafiʿi tashahhud they prefer from the narration of Ibn Abbas, not to what al-Ghumari claims, because that tashahhud includes the word al-mubarakat (the blessed greetings). This term is absent from Aishah’s hadith, whose wording is identical to that of Ibn Masud, letter for letter. True, just before this report al-Bayhaqi cites another narration from Aishah, mawquf, that says al-zakiyyat (the pure greetings) in place of al-mubarakat and also has the phrase al-salam ʿala al-nabiyy in the third-person form.