Overall meaning:
Ibn ʿUmar—may Allah be pleased with him—related that he once came to the house of his sister Ḥafṣah, the wife of the Prophet ﷺ, and saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ relieving himself while facing toward Syria with his back to the qiblah.
Scholarly disagreement and reconciliation of the two reports:
The jurists have differed over the ruling on facing—or turning one’s back to—the qiblah when answering the call of nature.
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Absolute prohibition. This was the position of Abū Ayyūb (the narrator of the first report), Mujāhid, al-Nakhaʿī, and al-Thawrī. Ibn Ḥazm championed it in al-Muḥallā, dismissing all other opinions, and it was likewise the choice of Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim, who defended it and refuted the alternative views in their works Zād al-Maʿād and Tahdhīb al-Sunan. They relied on the authentic narrations that contain an unrestricted prohibition, foremost among them the hadith of Abū Ayyūb cited above.
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Absolute permissibility. This view was held by ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr, Rabīʿah, and Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, who argued from several narrations, including the present report of Ibn ʿUmar.
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A differentiated ruling. Imams Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, and Isḥāq—as well as a report from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar and al-Shaʿbī—maintained that the ruling varies: it is prohibited in open spaces but permissible inside a built structure or the like.
This last view is the sound position, for it reconciles all the clear and authentic legal evidences.