Thus Allah sends a blessing upon the Prophet ﷺ that matches the blessing He sent upon Ibrahim and his family; and every time a servant invokes that formula, a fresh, limitless blessing descends upon him from his Lord—each blessing equal in weight to what Ibrahim and his family received, for the number of worshippers who pronounce this salat cannot be counted. The Prophet himself never let his tongue cease repeating this formula.(1) I add: Subki’s remarks should be a warning to those who deprive themselves of these immense rewards by neglecting the Ibrahimic salawat—except inside the prescribed prayer—and by clinging instead to innovated formulas for which Allah has sent down no authority, such as Salat al-Fatih lima ughliq (“the Opening of what is Closed”), Salat al-Nariyah, the so-called Salat al-Tilasmiyyah that contains the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud (the oneness of existence), the prayer of Ibn Mashish, and many similar compositions. Most of them are tainted with shirk (associating partners with Allah) and misguidance. The distinguished scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Wakil has exposed this in a series of articles entitled “Tawaghit” (“False Deities”) in this year’s issues of the journal al-Hadi al-Nabawi (A.H. 1367); whoever wishes to follow the Prophet’s guidance should consult them, for studies of this calibre are rare indeed. May Allah reward their compiler abundantly. Fifth benefit: The sunnah is to recite one of these approved formulas on one occasion and another on a different occasion—just as is done with the opening supplications (duʿaʾ al-istiftah), the various tashahhud texts, and so forth—not to combine them all in a single act of prayer, as some later scholars have suggested. Combining them produces a form that the Prophet ﷺ never taught, and that constitutes a bidʿah (religious innovation). Al-Adhraʿi said: “It is preferable for the worshipper, when reciting the tashahhud, to use the most complete narrations, saying each authenticated wording—this one time, that another. Patching them together creates a composite tashahhud whose wording has never been transmitted as a single unit in any hadith.” (1) Al-Haytami cites this in al-Durr al-Mandud (fol. 25/2) and later adds (fol. 27/1) that the objective is achieved by any of the forms recorded in the authentic hadiths.