The descent into sujūd: a question every congregation answers in two ways, and a question the sources answer with unusual clarity.
Hands or Knees First in Sujud? The Evidence Weighed
A comparative ḥadīth and fiqh study of the descent into prostration, with a conclusive preference
Every Muslim who has prayed in a congregation has seen it: one brother sinks into sujūd knees first, the next lowers himself hands first, and somewhere behind them a third does something in between. I've watched this small divergence become a disproportionately large argument. So I wrote this paper to settle it, for my own sake at least, and hopefully for the reader, on evidence rather than habit. First I collected every report on the question, then worked through the chains, narrator by narrator, against the verdicts of the recognised critics. The texts came next, and I asked of each one whether it said what people claim for it. The jurists I read last.
What did I find? The report of Abū Hurayrah رضي الله عنه, "When one of you prostrates, let him not kneel as the camel kneels, but let him place his hands before his knees", has a sound chain behind it and says what it plainly says. Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنه practised the same, in an authentic report of his own. So, on al-Awzāʿī's testimony, did the people of Madeenah. And the camel itself is evidence, for its "knees" are in its forelegs and touch the ground first. The opposing report of Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr رضي الله عنه, by contrast, reaches us through a single narrator whom the critics describe as truthful but error-prone. Al-Tirmidhī himself records it as a solitary transmission. And it is supported only by reports that are weak, broken, or unknown. So I conclude that placing the hands on the ground before the knees is the practice most beloved to the Prophet ﷺ. With Ibn Taymiyyahرحمه الله, I affirm that the prayer of anyone who does the reverse is valid. This matter has never been a cause for reproach among the scholars, and it won't become one here.
This paper was checked line by line before publication. Every claim below carries a chip showing its status:
AUTHENTICATED Verified this session against the named source or its standard scholarly apparatus.
TRANSMITTED Confirmed through the recognised scholarly literature that transmits it.
AS CITED Kept as the author cited it; consistent with known scholarship, but not independently verifiable here.
The full register of checks, including every correction made, is at the authentication register at the end.
- Why I wrote this paper
- Scope, method and terminology
- The ground we all stand on
- The case for placing the hands first
- The case for placing the knees first
- Weighing the two positions
- My conclusion: the practice most beloved to the Prophet ﷺ
- What follows in practice
- Test yourself, the authentication register, and sources
1. Why I wrote this paper
I open with my own interest, because it shapes the way I have handled the evidence.
For years I assumed this question had an obvious answer. In the masjid I grew up in, everyone went down knees first; the local scholars taught it; the books on the prayer I was given repeated it. Then I travelled, prayed behind different imams, and discovered that large numbers of Muslims, including some of the most meticulous students of ḥadīth I have ever met, do the opposite, and do so with total confidence. When I asked why, I was given chains of transmission. When I asked my own teachers why, I was also given chains of transmission. The two sets of chains pointed in opposite directions, and I realised that I had never examined either of them.
That is the purpose of this paper. I didn't want to inherit a position. I wanted to earn one. So I went back to the primary sources. That means the six canonical collections; the Ṣaḥīḥs of Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله and Ibn Ḥibbānرحمه الله; the Sunan of al-Dāraquṭnīرحمه الله and al-Bayhaqīرحمه الله; the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shaybah; al-Ṭaḥāwī's two works on the problematic reports; Ibn Ḥajar's Fatḥ al-Bārī; Ibn al-Qayyim's Zād al-Maʿād; and the works of the later critics. And I read what each side itself said, not what its opponents said it said.
I'll say at the outset what this paper doesn't do. Nobody's prayer is declared invalid here, and nobody should go correcting the elderly woman in the third row or making a scene in the masjid on the strength of it. It reaches a conclusion, as a paper of this kind should, and I've tried to keep the reasoning visible so that the reader can follow it, test it, and disagree with it if he finds I've erred.
2. Scope, method and terminology
2.1 The question precisely stated
The classical books give the issue its own name, kayfiyyat al-huwiyy ilā al-sujūd, the manner of descending into prostration. My question is a narrow one. When a person praying has completed his rukūʿ and is falling towards the ground for the first sajda, which reaches the floor first, the two knees or the two palms?
Three matters lie outside my scope, and I name them at once. First, the question of what must touch the ground during sujūd is settled and is not in dispute here: the Prophet ﷺ said, I have been commanded to prostrate on seven bones: the forehead, and he pointed to his nose, the two hands, the two knees, and the ends of the two feet
[Bukhārī 812; Muslim 490]. Second, the question of where the hands are placed once one is already in sujūd (level with the shoulders, or with the ears) is a separate issue with its own evidence. Third, the mirror-image question of what rises first when one stands up from the second sujūd is related but distinct, and I shall deal with it only briefly in the final section.
2.2 How I evaluated the evidence
I applied four tests to every report, in this order.
First, the isnād, the chain. Is it unbroken? Are its narrators trustworthy and precise? Here I've leaned on the classical discipline of jarḥ wa taʿdīl, citing the verdicts of Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīnرحمه الله, al-Bukhārīرحمه الله, Abū Ḥātimرحمه الله, al-Dāraquṭnīرحمه الله, Ibn Ḥajarرحمه الله, al-Dhahabīرحمه الله and others. My own judgements about narrators who died twelve centuries ago are worth little beside theirs.
Second, tafarrud, singularity. A report narrated by one weak or error-prone transmitter, against a background of stronger transmitters who narrated the same material without that detail, is treated by the critics as shādhdh or munkar. This principle turns out to be decisive in our question, and I shall return to it repeatedly.
Third, the matn, the wording. Is it explicit? Is it internally coherent? Does it cohere with what we otherwise know of the prayer of the Prophet ﷺ and of the Arabic language?
Fourth, tarjīḥ, preponderance. Where two reports truly conflict and neither can be discarded, which one prevails? I've applied the recognised criteria. A report with a witness (shāhid) beats one that stands alone. Set a prophetic statement (qawlī) beside a mere description of action (fiʿlī), both equally sound, and the statement governs, because it expresses legislative intent outright. And a chain the critics have left untouched outranks one they have impugned.
I have also been careful not to confuse two different kinds of "majority". Counting jurists is not the same as weighing evidence, and the scholars themselves have distinguished the two. Al-Ḥākim wrote, of the reports favouring hands first, as for inversion in this matter, my heart inclines rather to the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿUmar, because of the many narrations to that effect from the Companions and the Successors
[al-Mustadrak 1/226]. Ibn Sayyid al-Nāsرحمه الله went further and said: The ḥadīths about placing the hands before the knees are preponderant in terms of chain, and more explicit in terms of indication, because they are prophetic statements, and because of the force that the wording gives in disapproving of resemblance to the camel, whose knee is in its foreleg
[cited in al-Mubārakfūrīرحمه الله, Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī].
3. The ground we all stand on
Before the two camps face each other, I need to establish what they share. It frames everything that follows, and it ought to lower the temperature of the argument considerably. TRANSMITTED
There is consensus, and I use the word in its technical sense, since Ibn Taymiyyahرحمه الله recorded it as such, that the order of descent is not a pillar (rukn) of the prayer and not a condition of its validity. He wrote: Praying in both ways is permissible according to the consensus of the scholars. If a person wishes to go down knees first or hands first, his prayer is valid in either case according to the consensus of the scholars; they disputed only as to which is preferable
[Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā 22/449]. Al-Nawawī, who personally saw no clear preponderance either way, said much the same: Those who advocated placing the hands first relied upon certain ḥadīths, and those who argued for the opposite also relied upon ḥadīths; no clear preference for either position is evident from the Sunnah
[al-Majmūʿ 3/421].
The descent should also be performed with composure and without haste, and that too is by consensus. This follows from the general obligation of ṭumaʾnīnah in the prayer, established by the famous ḥadīth of the man who prayed badly, in which the Prophet ﷺ instructed him to be at ease in every position [Bukhārī 757; Muslim 397]. Whoever drops into sujūd like a stone has a problem regardless of which limb landed first.
So the dispute is a dispute about afḍaliyyah: which of two valid actions is better, more beloved, more in keeping with the practice of the Prophet ﷺ himself. It's a real question and worth answering, but it isn't one on which anyone's Islam turns.
4. The case for placing the hands first
4.1 The principal text: the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah رضي الله عنه
This position rests on a prophetic statement. Abū Hurayrah رضي الله عنه reported that the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ said:
إِذَا سَجَدَ أَحَدُكُمْ فَلَا يَبْرُكْ كَمَا يَبْرُكُ الْبَعِيرُ، وَلْيَضَعْ يَدَيْهِ قَبْلَ رُكْبَتَيْهِ
"When one of you prostrates, let him not kneel as the camel kneels, but let him place his hands before his knees."
I traced this wording through the collections: Abū Dāwūd 840; al-Nasāʾī 1091 and al-Kubrā 682; al-Dārimī 1360; Aḥmad 8955 in the Musnad; al-Bayhaqī 2739 in al-Sunan al-Kubrā; al-Bukhārīرحمه الله in al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr; al-Ṭaḥāwīرحمه الله in both Sharḥ Maʿānī al-Āthār and Mushkil al-Āthār; al-Dāraquṭnīرحمه الله; al-Baghawīرحمه الله in Sharḥ al-Sunnah 3/135; al-Ḥāzimīرحمه الله in al-Iʿtibār; and Ibn Ḥazmرحمه الله in al-Muḥallā. Abū Dāwūd's chapter title for it is confirmed against the printed Sunan: he placed the hands-first ḥadīth under a heading about the knees, a sign of how the compilers themselves felt the tension between the two reports.
Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr→ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Darāwardī→Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥasan→Abū al-Zinād→al-Aʿraj→Abū Hurayrah→the Prophet ﷺ
Click each stage below to see what the critics said about it.
Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr
Imam, ḥāfiẓ, compiler of one of the earliest Sunan collections. No criticism relevant to this report.
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Darāwardī
Among the narrators of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim; declared trustworthy by Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn and ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī; al-Mubārakfūrī calls him "trustworthy, a ḥāfiẓ" [Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī 4/5, 4/12].
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥasan
Known as al-Nafs al-Zakiyyah, the ʿAlawid. Declared trustworthy by al-Nasāʾī and others. The one point al-Bukhārī queried, addressed in §4.2 below.
Abū al-Zinād
ʿAbdullāh ibn Dhakwān, the Madeenan faqīh, one of the most transmitted narrators of his generation. Died 130 AH.
al-Aʿraj
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Hurmuz, the great scholar of Madeenah, the standard narrator from Abū Hurayrah رضي الله عنه. His reports form a large share of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī.
A second, shorter wording comes from the same Companion through a different chain: Does one of you deliberately kneel in his prayer as the camel kneels?
[al-Tirmidhī 269; Abū Dāwūd 841], transmitted by Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd → ʿAbdullāh ibn Nāfiʿ → Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥasan → Abū al-Zinād → al-Aʿraj → Abū Hurayrah. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥasan, then, was not alone in transmitting the substance of the report. The chain reached him by a second route.
Al-Nasāʾī and al-Bayhaqīرحمه الله carry a third wording, and it removes all ambiguity about the sequence: Let none of you kneel as the camel kneels, but let him place his hands, then his knees
(لَا يَبْرُكَنَّ أَحَدُكُمْ كَمَا يَبْرُكُ الْبَعِيرُ، وَلَكِنْ يَضَعُ يَدَيْهِ ثُمَّ رُكْبَتَيْهِ). It is this wording that Ibn Rushd al-Jaddرحمه الله cited when he declared the hands-first position "the soundest of the views" [cited in ʿAlīshرحمه الله, Manḥ al-Jalīl]. TRANSMITTED
4.2 The state of the chain, and the objections to it
I have to be scrupulously fair here, because the knees-first camp attacks this chain and I must state their attack in its strongest form.
Three objections were raised. The first is that al-Darāwardī was alone in narrating it from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥasan. The second is that Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh was alone in narrating it from Abū al-Zinād. The third, and the only one of real technical weight, is al-Bukhārī's remark: I do not know whether Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥasan heard from Abū al-Zinād or not
.
My assessment, having read the responses, is that none of these objections survives scrutiny.
As to the first and second: singularity is not a defect in itself. If it were, a great deal of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī would collapse. It would begin with the first ḥadīth in the book, Actions are but by intentions
, which reaches us uniquely through Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī from Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Taymī from ʿAlqamah ibn Waqqāṣ from ʿUmar رضي الله عنه. What matters is whether the solitary narrator is trustworthy, and both al-Darāwardī and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh are. Al-Darāwardī is among the narrators of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim and was declared trustworthy by Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīnرحمه الله and ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnīرحمه الله; al-Mubārakfūrīرحمه الله describes him as "trustworthy, a ḥāfiẓ" [Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī 4/5, 4/12]. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥasan, known as al-Nafs al-Zakiyyah, the ʿAlawid, was declared trustworthy by al-Nasāʾīرحمه الله and others. Al-Mubārakfūrī adds that al-Dāraquṭnī's claim of singularity is factually incorrect, since ʿAbdullāh ibn Nāfiʿ corroborated al-Darāwardī [Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī 4/12]. And Yāsir al-Fathī identifies four trustworthy transmitters who took the report from al-Darāwardī: Isḥāq ibn Abī Isrāʾīl, ʿAbdullāh ibn Wahb, Muḥriz ibn Salamah, and Aṣbagh ibn al-Faraj [Takhrīj Sunan Abī Dāwūd 9/300–301]. AS CITED
As to the third: al-Bukhārī's method famously required positive knowledge that the two narrators met in person, whereas the majority of the imāms require only the possibility of meeting, coupled with the absence of tadlīs. Here the majority's standard is satisfied comfortably. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh lived in Madeenah and died in 145 AH at the age of fifty-three; Abū al-Zinād died in Madeenah in 130 AH. They were contemporaries in the same city for some forty years [al-Arnāʾūṭ, Takhrīj Sunan Abī Dāwūd 2/131]. He was not known for tadlīs. Al-Albānī's conclusion seems to me unanswerable: This is an authentic chain, all of whose men are trustworthy, the men of Muslim, apart from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Ḥasan, who is trustworthy
[al-Aṣl: Ṣifat Ṣalāt al-Nabī 2/720; Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl 2/78].
In my reading, the roll of scholars who authenticated this ḥadīth is decisive: al-Nawawīرحمه الله said its chain is jayyid [al-Majmūʿ 3/421]; ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Ishbīlīرحمه الله indicated in his preface that it is ṣaḥīḥ al-isnād [al-Aḥkām al-Ṣughrā 243]; al-Suyūṭīرحمه الله declared it ṣaḥīḥ [al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr, no. 668]; al-Zarqānīرحمه الله authenticated it [Sharḥ al-Mawāhib 7/320]; Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭرحمه الله called its chain strong; Aḥmad Shākirرحمه الله authenticated it in his checking of al-Muḥallā; al-Mubārakfūrīرحمه الله said it is ṣaḥīḥ and valid as evidence; Muqbil ibn Hādīرحمه الله declared it ṣaḥīḥ; and al-Albānīرحمه الله, as noted, authenticated it in Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl 2/78 and in his checking of Sunan Abī Dāwūd. AUTHENTICATED TRANSMITTED
Two further defences deserve mention. Al-Mubārakfūrī answers al-Bukhārī's remark about Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh, that he is not followed in it, by saying that this does no harm, for he is trustworthy, and his ḥadīth has a witness from the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿUmar
[Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī 2/135]. Al-Shawkānī had made the same answer before him [Nayl al-Awṭār 2/284]. And al-Mubārakfūrīرحمه الله rules elsewhere that the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah is "ṣaḥīḥ or ḥasan li-dhātihi, all of whose narrators are trustworthy". Its singularity, he rules, is no defect: for there are ṣaḥīḥ ḥadīths that are gharīb, indeed of the highest degree of authenticity, such as the ḥadīth "Actions are but by intentions"
[Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī]. AUTHENTICATED (the wording, with al-Mubārakfūrī's grading, is confirmed; the volume number varies between editions).
Most significantly for me, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānīرحمه الله, who is nobody's partisan in this dispute, wrote in Bulūgh al-Marām: This ḥadīth is stronger than the ḥadīth of Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr, for it has a witness from the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿUmar, which Ibn Khuzaymah authenticated and which al-Bukhārī mentioned in suspended form
[Bulūgh al-Marām, no. 245; and see al-Qārīرحمه الله, Mirqāt al-Mafātīḥ 2/570, where he records that Ibn Ḥajarرحمه الله called its chain jayyid]. AUTHENTICATED And Qāḍī Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabīرحمه الله, a Mālikī, and one of the sharpest critics of the Abū Hurayrah ḥadīth's opponents, preferred it over the report of Wāʾil in his ʿĀriḍat al-Aḥwadhī. His additional ground is that the manner which Mālikرحمه الله saw and taught is the manner transmitted from the people of Madeenah and the nearer to reverence and humility. When the greatest of the ḥadīth critics tells me that report A outweighs report B, I need serious reasons to say otherwise.
4.3 The witness: Ibn ʿUmar's practice and his attribution to the Prophet ﷺ
Ibn Ḥajar's "witness" is the second pillar of this position. TRANSMITTED
Al-Bukhārī, in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī immediately before ḥadīth 803, states in the assertive suspended form (muʿallaq bi-ṣīghat al-jazm), a form which, as every student of ḥadīth knows, al-Bukhārīرحمه الله uses only for material he considers sound: And Nāfiʿ said: Ibn ʿUmar used to place his hands before his knees
(وَقَالَ نَافِعٌ: كَانَ ابْنُ عُمَرَ يَضَعُ يَدَيْهِ قَبْلَ رُكْبَتَيْهِ).
The connected version, with the attribution to the Prophet ﷺ, is given by Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله in his Ṣaḥīḥ (no. 627): Ibn ʿUmar used to place his hands before his knees, and he said: the Messenger of Allāh used to do that
. The same report is in al-Ḥākim's al-Mustadrak 1/226 (no. 821), who declared it ṣaḥīḥ according to the conditions of Muslim, with al-Dhahabīرحمه الله agreeing; in al-Bayhaqīرحمه الله, al-Sunan al-Kubrā 2/100; in al-Ṭaḥāwīرحمه الله, Sharḥ Maʿānī al-Āthār (no. 1513); in al-Dāraquṭnīرحمه الله; and in al-Ḥāzimīرحمه الله, al-Iʿtibār. Al-Albānī declared it ṣaḥīḥ upon the conditions of Muslim [Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl 2/77].
al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Ḥusayn→Muḥammad ibn Aṣbagh ibn al-Faraj→his father→al-Darāwardī→ʿUbaydullāh ibn ʿUmar→Nāfiʿ→Ibn ʿUmar
From Nāfiʿ, the freedman of Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنه, through ʿUbaydullāh ibn ʿUmar al-ʿUmari: one of the most authenticated transmission-lines in the entire Sunnah.
Two features of this report strike me. First, it is a Companion's practice explicitly referred to the Prophet. Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنه was famously the most meticulous of imitators of the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ; when he tells us that he did a thing because the Prophet did it, that is not a personal preference. Second, it reaches us through Nāfiʿ from Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنه, among the chains the tradition regards as the strongest in existence.
There's a subtlety here which I must handle honestly, because it cuts both ways. Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله authenticated this report. Yet he placed it under a chapter heading asserting that the command to place the hands first had been abrogated. In other words, one of the greatest imāms of ḥadīth considered the hands-first material genuine but superseded. I shall deal with the abrogation claim directly in §6.4, where I hope to show that it rests entirely on a chain that is very weak indeed.
4.4 The testimony of al-Awzāʿīرحمه الله and the practice of the people
Al-Awzāʿī, the imām of Syria, said: I found the people placing their hands before their knees
(أَدْرَكْتُ النَّاسَ يَضَعُونَ أَيْدِيَهُمْ قَبْلَ رُكَبِهِمْ). Al-Ḥāzimī records it in al-Iʿtibār (p. 80), cited by Ibn Ḥajarرحمه الله in Fatḥ al-Bārī 2/291, and by al-Shawkānīرحمه الله in Nayl al-Awṭār 2/293. When al-Awzāʿīرحمه الله says "the people" (al-nās), he means the scholars and the praying community he grew up among: the generation of the Successors in the Ḥijāz and Shām. TRANSMITTED
Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūdرحمه الله added the sociological note: That is the position of the people of ḥadīth
(وَهُوَ قَوْلُ أَصْحَابِ الْحَدِيثِ) [cited in al-Shawkānīرحمه الله, Nayl al-Awṭār 2/293; and in Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله, Zād al-Maʿād 1/224]. Al-Albānī records the same: And since those reports are not authentic, the reliance is upon what the first group said, which is the position of the people of ḥadīth, as Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūd said, and as was transmitted in al-Zād
[Ṣifat Ṣalāt al-Nabī 2/719].
And Mālik ibn Anasرحمه الله himself, the imām of Madeenah, is quoted as saying: He places his hands before his knees
and the Sunnah is to precede with the hands
[al-Khaṭṭābīرحمه الله, Maʿālim al-Sunan 1/368; al-Nawawīرحمه الله, al-Majmūʿ 3/395]. Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabīرحمه الله records: Mālik and al-Awzāʿī held that one begins with the hands in sujūd
[ʿĀriḍat al-Aḥwadhī 2/69]. Mālikرحمه الله is further reported to have said of this manner that it is better for khushūʿ in the prayer
[cited in Fatḥ al-Bārī 2/291], and to have observed, regarding the corresponding order when rising, that only a young man with little flesh can manage to precede with the hands when standing
[reported by Ashhab, cited in ʿAlīshرحمه الله, Manḥ al-Jalīl]. The Mālikī school codified this in its central manual: Khalīl ibn Isḥāqرحمه الله writes among the recommended acts of prayer, and the preceding of his hands in his sujūd, and their being delayed when standing
[Mukhtaṣar Khalīl]; Ibn ʿĀshir versified it as preceding of a hand in placing, and in raising, the knees
[al-Murshid al-Muʿīn]. TRANSMITTED
It matters for a reason that is often missed: the hands-first practice was not an eccentricity of a handful of literalists. It was the established practice of Madeenah, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, where the Companions prayed and where the Successors learned to pray, and of Syria. The argument from the practice of the people of Madeenah was, for Mālikرحمه الله, one of the strongest sources of law there is.
4.5 The camel: the crux of the whole dispute
The argument that follows persuaded me above all others.
Chief among the rational objections to the Abū Hurayrah ḥadīth is that it appears to contradict itself. The Prophet ﷺ forbids kneeling as the camel kneels, and then, they say, commands exactly what the camel does. Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله put it forcefully: If he places his hands before his knees, then he has knelt as the camel kneels, for the camel places his hands first
. When it was said to him that the camel's knees are in its forelegs, he replied that this is speech that is not intelligible and is not known to the people of the language; the knee is in the legs, and if the name "knee" is applied to those in the forelegs, it is by way of taghlīb
[Zād al-Maʿād 1/224]. TRANSMITTED
I find this reply unconvincing, and I shall set out why with some care, because much of the question turns on it.
(a) The lexicographers
Al-Jawharī (d. 393 AH) writes in al-Ṣiḥāḥ: The ʿurqūb of a beast is in its hind leg, in the position of the knee in its foreleg. Al-Aṣmaʿī said: every quadruped has its ʿurqūbān in its hind legs and its knees in its forelegs.
Ibn Sīdahرحمه الله repeats the same in al-Mukhaṣṣaṣ. Ibn Manẓūrرحمه الله, in Lisān al-ʿArab, defines the two knees of the forelegs of the camel
as the two joints adjacent to the belly when it kneels
, adding: every quadruped has its knees in its forelegs and its ʿurqūbān in its hind legs
. Al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255 AH), the greatest prose stylist and naturalist of the classical Arabic tradition, wrote in Kitāb al-Ḥayawān 2/355: Every quadruped has its knees in its forelegs, while a human being's knees are in his legs.
This is not an isolated or eccentric usage. It's the settled terminology of the Arabs, and it's the terminology in which the Prophet ﷺ spoke. TRANSMITTED
(b) The Prophet's own usage in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī
In the ḥadīth of the Hijrah, Surāqah ibn Mālikرحمه الله رضي الله عنه recounts: The forelegs of my horse sank into the ground up to its knees
(سَاخَتْ يَدَا فَرَسِي فِي الْأَرْضِ حَتَّى بَلَغَتَا الرُّكْبَتَيْنِ) [Bukhārī 3906]. Here the Prophet's Companion, in a report the Prophet did not correct, uses rukbah for a joint in the foreleg of a quadruped. The usage is thus attested within the Ṣaḥīḥ itself. AUTHENTICATED
(c) Al-Ṭaḥāwī's concession
The point that I find most telling is al-Ṭaḥāwīرحمه الله himself, the greatest Ḥanafī ḥadīth master and an advocate of the knees-first view. In Mushkil al-Āthār 1/169 he confronts the objection that the ḥadīth is self-contradictory, and his answer begins by conceding the linguistic fact:
We reflected upon what he said, and found it to be impossible, and we found that what was reported from the Messenger of Allāh in this ḥadīth is sound and contains no absurdity. That is because the camel's two knees are in its forelegs, as is the case with every four-legged animal; and the children of Adam are otherwise, for their knees are in their legs, not in their hands. So the Messenger of Allāh forbade the person praying, in this ḥadīth, from falling upon his two knees which are in his legs, as the camel falls upon its two knees which are in its forelegs; rather he should fall for his sujūd in the opposite manner, falling upon his hands, in which there are no knees, unlike the camel, which falls upon its hands, in which its knees are. Thus it becomes clear, by the praise of Allāh, that what is in this ḥadīth from the Messenger of Allāh is sound speech, containing neither contradiction nor absurdity.
The champion of the knees-first position in the Ḥanafī tradition tells us that the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah is internally coherent and that its coherence consists in the human being placing his hands first. He also states in Sharḥ Maʿānī al-Āthār 1/254: The camel's knees are in its forelegs, as with other animals, whereas humans are not like this.
AUTHENTICATED
(d) The observable fact
Whatever we call the joints, the sequence of a camel's descent is a matter anyone can verify. A camel couching first folds its forelegs, dropping its forequarters and its chest towards the ground, and the rider is thrown forwards, and only then folds its hindquarters beneath it, throwing the rider backwards. Its foreleg joints, which the Arabs call its knees, reach the ground first. Modern descriptions of camel couching are unanimous on the sequence: the front legs buckle until the animal is kneeling, then the hind legs collapse, then the chest is brought down onto its calloused sternal pad. Ibn al-Qayyim's assertion that the camel places its hands first is thus not in dispute between the two camps at all; both agree on it. What they disagree about is whether that fact supports the ḥadīth or contradicts it. And once we accept, with the lexicographers and with al-Ṭaḥāwīرحمه الله, that the camel's foreleg joints are its knees, the fact supports the ḥadīth perfectly. The camel goes down knees first, and the human being should therefore go down hands first.
(e) The answer to Ibn al-Qayyim's taghlīb argument
Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله says that applying "knee" to the foreleg joint is mere taghlīb, a loose, predominating usage. But taghlīb is a recognised feature of Arabic, and more to the point, the ḥadīth is addressed to people for whom this was the ordinary, unforced meaning of the word. Al-Albānī's rebuke is sharp but, I think, deserved: he calls Ibn al-Qayyim's denial an extremely strange statement
and answers it by citing Lisān al-ʿArab, al-Ṭaḥāwīرحمه الله, al-Qāsim al-Saraquṣṭīرحمه الله and the report of Surāqah [al-Aṣl: Ṣifat Ṣalāt al-Nabī 2/724; Ṣifat al-Ṣalāh, p. 122]. A principle of interpretation is worth stating here, and it's one the scholars themselves formulated: the texts of the Sharīʿah are interpreted according to the customary understanding of those among whom the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ lived. Where that is not available, the Arabic language governs. On both counts, the camel's knee is in its foreleg. TRANSMITTED
(f) A second, complementary reading
I should add that even if one rejects all of the above, there's an alternative reading of the ḥadīth which produces the same practical result. Al-Qāsim al-Saraquṣṭī transmitted in Gharīb al-Ḥadīth 1/70, with an authentic chain, that Abū Hurayrah رضي الله عنه said: Let none of you kneel as a runaway camel kneels
(لَا يَبْرُكْ أَحَدُكُمْ بُرُوكَ الْبَعِيرِ الشَّارِدِ). He explained: This refers to sujūd: one should not throw himself down all at once, as a restless, runaway camel does, hurriedly and without composure. Rather, he should descend calmly, placing his hands first and then his knees.
Al-Albānī adopts this reading [Ṣifat al-Ṣalāh, p. 122]. On this reading the prohibition concerns the violence and abruptness of the camel's collapse, which anyone who has been on a camel's back will confirm is an alarming experience, and not the identity of the limb alone. It's, I think, the reading that best explains why the ḥadīth pairs the camel simile with an explicit instruction. It also aligns with the wider Prophetic programme of removing animal-like postures from the prayer: the glance of the fox, the pecking of the crow, the squatting of the dog, the sprawling of the beast of prey.
Yet the two readings agree on the result. Neither permits the conclusion that the knees should go first. TRANSMITTED
4.6 The argument from the report about ʿUmar رضي الله عنه
One report is cited by both camps, and I believe the knees-first camp has misread it. Al-Ṭaḥāwī records in Sharḥ Maʿānī al-Āthār 1/256 (no. 1419; numbered 1528 in some editions), through ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth → his father → al-Aʿmash → Ibrāhīm → the companions of ʿAbdullāh, ʿAlqamah and al-Aswad, who said:
"We preserved from ʿUmar in his prayer that after his rukūʿ he fell upon his knees as the camel falls, and placed his knees before his hands."
Sharḥ Maʿānī al-Āthār 1/256 · chain graded authentic by al-Albānīرحمه الله · AUTHENTICATED
Al-Albānī declared this chain authentic [al-Aṣl: Ṣifat Ṣalāt al-Nabī 2/717]. The knees-first camp treats it as their strongest non-Prophetic evidence, and on the authenticity of the chain they are right. But the wording tells against them: ʿUmar رضي الله عنه fell upon his knees as the camel falls. The two Successors who reported it did not merely describe his action; they likened it to the camel's kneeling. If going down knees first were the contrary of the camel's kneeling, the simile would be incoherent. On the lexical analysis set out above, the report is evidence for the hands-first position: it tells us that the Companions' own idiom for "knees first" was "like a camel". As one contemporary researcher put it, when asked how ʿUmar could have done what the Prophet forbade: the prohibition had simply not reached him, and had he known it he would never have acted against it.
4.7 The rational and purposive arguments
I give these less weight than the texts, but they are not negligible, and they were advanced by serious scholars.
Mālik's consideration is that the manner is better for khushūʿ
[Fatḥ al-Bārī 2/291]. Ibn al-Munīr's is practical and humane: by preceding with the hands, a person protects himself from the pain of his knees when he kneels upon them
[Fatḥ al-Bārī 2/291; and see al-Durar al-Saniyyah, al-Mawsūʿah al-Fiqhiyyah]. The point isn't trivial. I've watched elderly men wince as they dropped onto hard carpet, and the Sharīʿah doesn't delight in pain. Al-Shawkānī records a further consideration in Nayl al-Awṭār: preceding with the hands is within the capacity of everyone because of its ease, whereas preceding with the knees is manageable only for the young and strong.
I also find the Mālikī formulation elegant in its symmetry: hands first going down, hands last coming up. The worshipper never presents his knees to the ground before his hands in either direction, exactly inverting the camel, which precedes with its forelegs when couching and delays them when rising.
5. The case for placing the knees first
I now turn to the opposing position, which is held by the Ḥanafīs, the Shāfiʿīs, the well-known position of the Ḥanbalīs, and a great many scholars whom I respect enormously. I shall present it as strongly as I can, because a paper that caricatures the other side is worthless.
5.1 The principal report: Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr رضي الله عنه
Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr رضي الله عنه, the Ḥaḍramī Companion, said:
رَأَيْتُ النَّبِيَّ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ إِذَا سَجَدَ وَضَعَ رُكْبَتَيْهِ قَبْلَ يَدَيْهِ، وَإِذَا نَهَضَ رَفَعَ يَدَيْهِ قَبْلَ رُكْبَتَيْهِ
"I saw the Prophet, when he prostrated, place his knees before his hands; and when he rose, raise his hands before his knees."
al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī and al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿĪsā→Yazīd ibn Hārūn→Sharīk ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Qāḍī→ʿĀṣim ibn Kulayb→his father→Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr
Sharīk ibn ʿAbdullāh: the hinge of this report
Sharīk al-Qāḍī, the judge of Kūfah. Ibn Ḥajar's verdict in Taqrīb al-Tahdhīb: truthful, but he makes many mistakes, and his memory deteriorated after he assumed the judgeship in Kūfah
. Al-Dāraquṭnī: he is not strong in what he narrates alone
. Al-Tirmidhī: we know of no one who narrated it other than Sharīk
. AUTHENTICATED
Yazīd ibn Hārūn's own caution
Yazīd ibn Hārūn, the transmitter in this chain and one of the greatest imāms of his age, is reported as saying that Sharīk narrated from ʿĀṣim ibn Kulayb only this one ḥadīth [recorded in al-Tirmidhī 268; the attribution of the remark to Yazīd is as cited]. AS CITED
This is found in Abū Dāwūd 838; al-Tirmidhī 268; al-Nasāʾī 1089 and 1155; Ibn Mājah 882; al-Dārimī 1357; Ibn Khuzaymah 626; Ibn Ḥibbān 1912, under the heading what is recommended for the person praying: that he place his knees on the ground before his palms when prostrating
; al-Bayhaqī, al-Sunan al-Kubrā 2/99; al-Dāraquṭnī; al-Ḥākim; al-Baghawī, Sharḥ al-Sunnah 3/133–135; and al-Ḥāzimī, al-Iʿtibār. AUTHENTICATED (the text and its distribution are confirmed; Tirmidhī 268, Nasāʾī 1089 and Ibn Mājah 882 were checked directly).
Its proponents are weighty. Al-Tirmidhī said: This is a ḥasan gharīb ḥadīth; we know of no one who narrated it other than Sharīk. And the practice according to it is that of most of the people of knowledge: they hold that a man should place his knees before his hands, and when he rises should raise his hands before his knees
[al-Tirmidhī 268]. Al-Khaṭṭābī said: The ḥadīth of Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr is better established than this one, the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah; and it is gentler for the person praying and better in form and to the eye
[Maʿālim al-Sunan, cited by al-Nawawīرحمه الله, al-Majmūʿ 3/395]. Al-Ḥākim authenticated it upon the conditions of Muslim and al-Dhahabīرحمه الله concurred. Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله and Ibn Ḥibbānرحمه الله included it in their Ṣaḥīḥs. Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله wrote: He used to place his knees before his hands, then his hands after them, then his forehead and nose. This is the sound report, narrated by Sharīk from ʿĀṣim ibn Kulayb from his father from Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr, and nothing contrary to it has been reported of his action
[Zād al-Maʿād 1/224]. Ibn Bāzرحمه الله held it [Majmūʿ Fatāwā Ibn Bāz 11/61–62], and Ibn ʿUthaymīnرحمه الله held it [Majmūʿ Fatāwā wa Rasāʾil al-ʿUthaymīn 13/173–174]. AUTHENTICATED for al-Tirmidhī's and al-Khaṭṭābī's remarks; TRANSMITTED for the rest.
Ibn al-Mundhirرحمه الله records the breadth of support: ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb used to place his knees before his hands; and al-Nakhaʿī, Muslim ibn Yasār, Sufyān al-Thawrī, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Isḥāq, the people of opinion, and the people of Kūfah held the same. And Abū Bakr said: it is with the first view that I hold
[al-Ishrāf 2/30; al-Awsaṭ]. Sayyid Sābiqرحمه الله summarises it in Fiqh al-Sunnah 1/151. Qāḍī Abū Ṭayyib reports it as the view of the generality of the jurists.
5.2 The report of Anas رضي الله عنه
Al-Ḥākim (1/226) and al-Bayhaqīرحمه الله (2/99) record from Anas رضي الله عنه: I saw the Messenger of Allāh say the takbīr, and when he descended with the takbīr, his knees preceded his hands
. Its problems are set out in §6.2. AS CITED
5.3 The purported abrogation: the report of Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ رضي الله عنه
Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله built a chapter in his Ṣaḥīḥ (1/319, no. 628) on the report of Muṣʿab ibn Saʿd from his father Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ رضي الله عنه: We used to place the hands before the knees, then we were commanded to place the knees before the hands
, the express claim that the hands-first instruction was abrogated. Al-Bayhaqī also cites this line of argument. AS CITED
5.4 The inversion theory
Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله advanced the theory, which Ibn Bāzرحمه الله and Ibn ʿUthaymīnرحمه الله adopted, that the final clause of the Abū Hurayrah ḥadīth was inverted (maqlūb) by a narrator, and that its original wording was let him place his knees before his hands
, so that the end of the ḥadīth would agree with its beginning. Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله confesses the genealogy of his own conviction: It occurred to me that the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah was one whose text had been inverted upon some of its narrators, until I saw that Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah had narrated it in that very form
, namely, through Muḥammad ibn Fuḍayl → ʿAbdullāh ibn Saʿīd → his grandfather → Abū Hurayrah: When one of you prostrates, let him begin with his knees before his hands, and let him not kneel as the stallion kneels
[Ibn Abī Shaybah 1/235, no. 2702; Abū Yaʿlā 6540; al-Ṭaḥāwī 1/255; al-Bayhaqī 2/100, no. 2635]. Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله even drew a parallel with the famous inversion of the ḥadīth of Bilāl and Ibn Umm Maktūm رضي الله عنهما. TRANSMITTED
5.5 The practice of the Kūfans and the Successors
Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿīرحمه الله is reported to have said: It was preserved from ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd that his knees used to reach the ground before his hands
[al-Ṭaḥāwīرحمه الله, Sharḥ Maʿānī al-Āthār 1/256, via Ḥammād ibn Salamah from al-Ḥajjāj ibn Arṭāʾah]. And when al-Mughīrah asked Ibrāhīm about a man who begins with his hands before his knees in sujūd, Ibrāhīm replied: Does anyone do that except a fool or a madman?
The Ḥanafī school built on this foundation. Al-Zaylaʿī records the position in Naṣb al-Rāyah; his Tabyīn al-Ḥaqāʾiq 1/116 states it; al-Bannūrīرحمه الله summarises it in Maʿārif al-Sunan: Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad held that the hands are placed after the knees in sujūd; this is the position of al-Thawrī, Isḥāq, the generality of the jurists, all the people of Kūfah, and it is a narration from Mālik; and ʿUmar al-Fārūq and Ibn Masʿūd held it, as did Muslim ibn Yasār, Abū Qilābah and Ibn Sīrīn among the Successors.
AS CITED
5.6 The rational arguments
Three rational arguments deserve statement.
The first is the argument from the natural order of the limbs, articulated by Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله: The first of his body to reach the ground was that which was nearest to it, and the first to leave the ground was that which was highest. He would place his knees first, then his hands, then his forehead; and when he rose, he raised his head first, then his hands, then his knees. This is the reverse of what the camel does
[Zād al-Maʿād 1/224]. Ibn ʿUthaymīnرحمه الله develops it: when descending, the lower parts arrive first, one after another; when ascending, the upper parts leave first [Fatāwā 13/173–174].
The second is Ibn al-Qayyim's argument from the Prophetic programme of avoiding animal resemblance: He forbade kneeling as the camel kneels, glancing as the fox glances, sprawling as the beast of prey sprawls, squatting as the dog squats, pecking as the crow pecks, and raising the hands at the salutation like the tails of restive horses. The guidance of the person praying is contrary to the guidance of animals
[Zād al-Maʿād 1/224].
The third is the "manner, not limb" reading of the camel simile, which is Ibn ʿUthaymīn's principal answer to the lexical problem. He observes that the Prophet ﷺ said let him not kneel as the camel kneels
(كَمَا يَبْرُكُ), using the particle of comparison, and not let him not kneel upon what the camel kneels upon
(عَلَى مَا يَبْرُكُ عَلَيْهِ). The prohibition, he argues, is thus about the quality and manner of the descent, not about the identity of the limb that lands first; and the explicit command let him place his hands before his knees
must have been inverted, since the manner-reading alone cannot explain it [Fatāwā 13/173–174]. TRANSMITTED
6. Weighing the two positions
I have set both cases out. Now I must choose, and I shall show my working.
6.1 The comparison of chains
I find the comparison stark, and I don't think it's close.
On the hands-first side: a marfūʿ prophetic statement whose chain consists entirely of narrators from Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim bar one, and that one declared trustworthy, authenticated by al-Nawawīرحمه الله, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Ishbīlīرحمه الله, al-Suyūṭīرحمه الله, al-Zarqānīرحمه الله, al-Arnāʾūṭ, Aḥmad Shākirرحمه الله, al-Mubārakfūrīرحمه الله and al-Albānīرحمه الله, and declared by Ibn Ḥajarرحمه الله to be stronger than the ḥadīth of Wāʾil. Beside it, a Companion practice referred explicitly to the Prophet ﷺ, recorded by al-Bukhārīرحمه الله in the assertive suspended form, authenticated by Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله, al-Ḥākimرحمه الله (on Muslim's conditions), al-Dhahabīرحمه الله and al-Albānīرحمه الله. Beside that, the attested practice of the people of Madeenah and Shām in the generation of the Successors, witnessed by al-Awzāʿīرحمه الله and codified by Mālikرحمه الله.
On the knees-first side: a report whose sole point of vulnerability is Sharīk ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Nakhaʿī al-Qāḍī. I don't think Sharīk was a bad man or a liar. Ibn Ḥajar's verdict is truthful, but he makes many mistakes, and his memory deteriorated after he assumed the judgeship in Kūfah
[Taqrib al-Tahdhīb]. But that verdict is the profile of a narrator whose solitary reports cannot bear legislative weight. And solitary is exactly what this report is. Al-Tirmidhī himself says: we know of no one who narrated it other than Sharīk
. Al-Dāraquṭnī said: No one narrated this from ʿĀṣim except Sharīk, and he is not strong in what he narrates alone.
Al-Bayhaqī said: This ḥadīth is reckoned among the singular narrations of Sharīk al-Qāḍī
[Fath al-Mannān 6/291–292]. Al-Albānī adds the observation that several precise narrators transmitted the very same chain from ʿĀṣim ibn Kulayb, describing Wāʾil's account of the prayer of the Prophet ﷺ at length, and none of them mentioned the knees-before-hands detail [al-Aṣl 2/715–716]. That, in the technical language of the discipline, is shudhūdh: an isolated addition by a fallible narrator contradicting more reliable ones. It is why al-Albānīرحمه الله graded the ḥadīth ḍaʿīf in his checking of Sunan Abī Dāwūd (9/233), why the Dar al-Salām editions grade it ḍaʿīf in both of those collections. Ibn al-ʿArabīرحمه الله called it gharīb and criticised it [ʿĀriḍat al-Aḥwadhī 2/90–91]; Yāsir al-Fathī called it munkar; Ibn Ḥazmرحمه الله judged the Abū Hurayrah chain stronger than it; and al-Ḥāzimī's conclusion, quoted by Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله himself, is that there is no aspect by which this ḥadīth can be established, and the best of its chains is that of Sharīk al-Nakhaʿī, whose weakness has been mentioned
. AUTHENTICATED for the Sharīk material; AS CITED for the page-level citations.
To be fair, the other side has its graders too: al-Ḥākimرحمه الله authenticated it, al-Dhahabīرحمه الله agreed, Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله and Ibn Ḥibbānرحمه الله admitted it to their Ṣaḥīḥs, al-Tirmidhīرحمه الله called it ḥasan, and al-Baghawīرحمه الله called it ḥasan. That's a substantial body of scholarly support, and it is why this is an ijtihādī question rather than a clear-cut one. But authenticity-by-inclusion in a Ṣaḥīḥ isn't the same as a chain free of criticism, and the criticism here is specific, technical, early, and repeated: it is a tafarrud by a man whose memory was known to have failed.
Wāʾil رضي الله عنه has a second report [Abū Dāwūd 839], through Hammām from Muḥammad ibn Juhādah from ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn Wāʾil from his father, and it is broken: ʿAbd al-Jabbār did not hear from his father. Its alternative route through Hammām from Shaqīq contains an unknown narrator. And al-Tirmidhīرحمه الله himself notes that Hammām narrated the report from ʿĀṣim in mursal form, without mentioning Wāʾil at all. TRANSMITTED
6.2 The report of Anas رضي الله عنه
This report fails on three counts. Its narrator al-ʿAlāʾ ibn Ismāʿīl al-ʿAṭṭār is unknown (majhūl), as Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله himself noted and as al-Bayhaqīرحمه الله recorded in al-Talkhīṣ 3/472; al-Dāraquṭnīرحمه الله said he narrated it alone from Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth, and Ḥafṣ's memory too deteriorated after he became a judge. Abū Ḥātimرحمه الله declared the ḥadīth munkar [al-ʿIlal 1/188, cited by his son]. And even if it were sound, its wording, his knees preceded his hands
, describes a sequence of movement, not necessarily of contact with the ground, as Ibn Ḥazmرحمه الله observed [al-Albānīرحمه الله, al-Aṣl 2/716–717]. A report that is unknown in chain and ambiguous in wording cannot overturn an explicit command. AS CITED
6.3 The report about Ibn Masʿūd رضي الله عنه and Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿīرحمه الله
The Ibn Masʿūd رضي الله عنه report comes through al-Ḥajjāj ibn Arṭāʾah, who is weak and a mudallis, and the chain is disconnected. And Ibrāhīm's remark, does anyone do that except a fool or a madman?
, is, whatever its authenticity, the personal irritation of a Kūfan Successor, not evidence. I note with interest that the same Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿīرحمه الله is the source through whom the authentic report about ʿUmar رضي الله عنه reaches us, the report which says that ʿUmar went down "as the camel goes down". The Kūfan tradition is thus internally inconsistent: it preserves the simile that undermines its own position. AS CITED
6.4 The abrogation claim
In my judgement, this claim is the weakest link in the knees-first case, and I am surprised it is still relied upon.
Abrogation is a grave matter. It requires an authentic, datable text that cannot be reconciled with the earlier one. All that is offered for the abrogation of "place your hands before your knees" is the report of Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ رضي الله عنه, through the chain: Abū Ṭāhir → Abū Bakr → Ibrāhīm ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Yaḥyā ibn Salamah ibn Kuhayl → his father → his grandfather → Salamah → Muṣʿab ibn Saʿd → Saʿd. Al-Dāraquṭnī said of Ismāʿīl ibn Yaḥyā and Yaḥyā that they are matrūkān, abandoned. Al-Albānī declared the chain ḍaʿīf jiddan: Ismāʿīl ibn Yaḥyā is abandoned and his son Ibrāhīm is weak
[Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله, checking]. Ibn Ḥajarرحمه الله declared it weak in Fatḥ al-Bārī 2/231, saying of Ibrāhīm and his father that they are both weak. Al-Mubārakfūrī declared it weak for the same reasons and added that what is authentically preserved from Muṣʿab on the authority of his father concerns the abrogation of taṭbīq, the clasping of the hands in rukūʿ, not this matter at all [Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī 4/14]. The claim was rejected by Ibn Ḥajarرحمه الله, al-Nawawīرحمه الله, Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله and al-Albānīرحمه الله alike. TRANSMITTED
Once the Saʿd report falls, the abrogation claim has no evidentiary basis whatsoever. And with it falls Ibn Khuzaymah's chapter heading: a striking illustration of how a great imām's legal conclusion can be sound in method yet built on a single weak plank.
6.5 The inversion theory
The inversion theory is, admittedly, the more troubling objection, because it was proposed by a scholar of Ibn al-Qayyim's calibre and adopted by Ibn Bāzرحمه الله and Ibn ʿUthaymīnرحمه الله. But I cannot accept it, for five reasons.
First, an inversion is an allegation against a trustworthy narrator, and allegations against trustworthy narrators require evidence, not conjecture. Al-ʿAẓīmābādī's reply is, to my mind, the decisive one: If this door were opened, no reliance could be placed on any narrator's narration, even if it were authentic
[ʿAwn al-Maʿbūd]. TRANSMITTED
Second, the only textual support for the alleged inversion is the narration of ʿAbdullāh ibn Saʿīd al-Maqburī, and that man isn't merely weak, he's ruined. Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭānرحمه الله weakened him; Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbalرحمه الله said his ḥadīth is objectionable and abandoned; Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīnرحمه الله said he is nothing; Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākimرحمه الله said his narrations are discarded; al-Bayhaqīرحمه الله said ʿAbdullāh ibn Saʿīd al-Maqburī is weak, and the verifier of the Dār al-Ḥadīth edition of al-Sunan al-Kubrā pronounced the ḥadīth bāṭil [al-Bayhaqīرحمه الله, al-Sunan al-Kubrā 2/223]; Ibn Ḥajarرحمه الله said its chain is weak
[Fatḥ al-Bārī 2/241]; al-Albānīرحمه الله said he is abandoned and that some accused him of lying, adding: Perhaps he deliberately reversed this ḥadīth, thereby altering its meaning
[al-Aṣl 2/722]. Al-Mubārakfūrī's demonstration that the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah is not muḍṭarib, because irregularity is only declared where conflicting versions are of equal strength, and authentic narrations are not undermined by weak ones [Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī 4/13], is a correct application of the discipline. TRANSMITTED
Third, Ibn al-Qayyim's own account of how he arrived at the theory is instructive: he says the thought occurred to him until he found Ibn Abī Shaybah's narration. That is to say, a rational difficulty was resolved by a text which turns out to be the narration of a man accused of lying. The reasoning is circular.
Fourth, the analogy Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله draws with the ḥadīth of Bilāl and Ibn Umm Maktūm رضي الله عنهما fails. That inversion is attested by the critics on the basis of overwhelming external evidence: the whole of the tradition about the two adhāns contradicts it. Here there's no such external evidence; the authentic report about ʿUmar رضي الله عنه supports the inversion-theorists' opponents, since it likens knees-first descent to the camel.
Fifth, and this is what I consider the clincher: the premise of the inversion theory is that the ḥadīth is internally contradictory. But I have shown in §4.5, on the authority of the lexicographers, of al-Bukhārī's own Ṣaḥīḥ, and of al-Ṭaḥāwīرحمه الله himself, that it is not contradictory at all. Once the camel's knees are recognised to be in its forelegs, the ḥadīth reads as a perfectly coherent single instruction: do not go down as the camel goes down, knees first, but go down hands first. No difficulty remains that would demand the heroic remedy of declaring a sound text corrupt. Al-aṣl ʿadam al-qalb: the default position is that the text is as it was transmitted.
6.6 Statement versus description
Even if, contrary to my analysis, one were to grant that both the Abū Hurayrah ḥadīth and the Wāʾil report are equally authentic, the scales would still tip towards hands first. A prophetic command addressed to the whole community (when one of you prostrates
) carries legislative force that a Companion's description of what he happened to see on one occasion does not. The recognised principle is that a qawlī report takes precedence over a fiʿlī one where the two conflict and neither can be reconciled by appeal to variation in practice. Ibn al-Turkumānīرحمه الله stated it in al-Jawhar al-Naqī: The ḥadīth mentioned first, "let him place his hands, then his knees", carries a verbal indication, and it has been reinforced by the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿUmar; so it may be given preference over the ḥadīth of Wāʾil, whose indication is from action, according to what is preponderant with the uṣūliyyūn.
It is the same reasoning as that of Ibn Sayyid al-Nāsرحمه الله, whom I quoted above: the hands-first reports are preponderant in chain and more explicit in indication, because they are prophetic statements
. AS CITED
And the reconciliation option, that the Prophet ﷺ sometimes did one and sometimes the other, is not available here in the way it is available for, say, raising the hands between the prostrations. For a description of variable practice to establish permissibility of both, we would need at least one sound description of each; and the description of knees-first is what has failed the test.
6.7 Why, then, did the majority go the other way?
I've thought hard about this, because it is the strongest sociological argument against my conclusion: three of the four schools, and most of the jurists of Kūfah, held the knees-first view.
Knees first, built on the Wāʾil report and the practice of Ibn Masʿūd رضي الله عنه. Al-Ṭaḥāwī defended the Wāʾil line while conceding the camel's knees are in its forelegs.
Knees first. Al-Nawawī saw no clear preponderance either way and recorded both lines faithfully.
Knees first in the well-known position, though the hands-first view was defended within the school by Ibn Taymiyyah's circle.
Hands first, from the practice of the people of Madeenah. Codified in the Mukhtaṣar of Khalīl ibn Isḥāqرحمه الله: the hands precede going down and are delayed when rising.
My answer has three parts.
First, the majority's position was formed largely in Kūfah and in the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī environments, where the Wāʾil report circulated through Yazīd ibn Hārūn and was received with the respect due to a Companion's eyewitness account. There the reports of ʿUmar رضي الله عنه and Ibn Masʿūd رضي الله عنه, the latter weak, the former authentic but misread, reinforced it. Al-Khaṭṭābī's assessment that the Wāʾil ḥadīth was better established
reflects a judgement about matn plausibility and the general practice, and it was made before the full technical critique of Sharīk's singularity was consolidated by al-Dāraquṭnīرحمه الله, al-Bayhaqīرحمه الله and their successors.
Second, the discipline of ḥadīth criticism developed after much of the fiqh was settled. It is not a reproach to al-Shāfiʿīرحمه الله or to Abū Ḥanīfahرحمه الله that they acted on a report which later critics identified as an isolated narration by a fallible transmitter. That is how the tradition works, and the later scholar stands on the shoulders of the earlier. But it does mean that the strength of the evidence and the number of the jurists are two different variables, and they don't always move together. Al-Ḥākim, Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله, al-Bayhaqīرحمه الله and Ibn Ḥajarرحمه الله are all jurists-cum-critics. On this question the greatest of them, Ibn Ḥajarرحمه الله, came down on the side of the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah.
Third, "the people of ḥadīth", Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūd's aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth, did hold the hands-first view, as did Mālikرحمه الله, al-Awzāʿīرحمه الله, Ibn Ḥazmرحمه الله, Ibn Sayyid al-Nāsرحمه الله, Ibn al-Turkumānīرحمه الله, Aḥmad Shākirرحمه الله and al-Albānīرحمه الله. The view is not marginal. It is the position of the tradition's most exacting textual critics, across a thousand years. Al-Shawkānī and al-Ṣanʿānīرحمه الله, for their part, did not declare a final preference that I have been able to establish with confidence, but both defended the authenticity of the Abū Hurayrah ḥadīth and recorded the reasoning of the hands-first camp at length. Al-Ṣanʿānī even observed that its apparent meaning denotes obligation, and that only the absence of any jurist who treated it as obligatory reduces it to recommendation [Subul al-Salām 1/424].
I would add one reflection. Al-Albānī treated this question in four of his works: Ṣifat Ṣalāt al-Nabī itself, his checking of Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ, Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl, and, at greatest length, al-Aṣl (2/714–724). In each of them he sets the two reports against each other and concludes for hands first, grading Abū Dāwūd 840 as ṣaḥīḥ and Abū Dāwūd 838 as ḍaʿīf. That openness is what the discipline should look like: the verdict follows the chains, and the reader can check every step of it against the books.
7. My conclusion: the practice most beloved to the Prophet ﷺ
Having examined everything I could find, I state my conclusion plainly.
The practice most beloved to the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ, when descending into sujūd, is that the hands reach the ground before the knees.
My reasons, in order of weight, are these.
- He commanded it in terms that could hardly be more explicit:
let him place his hands before his knees
, in a ḥadīth whose chain is authentic and which the greatest of the ḥadīth critics preferred over its opposite. A command from the Prophet ﷺ, addressed toone of you
, that is, to every one of us, is the highest form of evidence that the Sharīʿah contains, and I know of no sound text that countermands it. - The one Companion whose practice in this matter is authentically recorded and referred by him to the Prophet ﷺ is Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنه, and he placed his hands first. This report al-Bukhārīرحمه الله stated assertively, Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله authenticated, al-Ḥākimرحمه الله declared ṣaḥīḥ on Muslim's conditions with al-Dhahabī's agreement, and al-Albānīرحمه الله confirmed.
- The only authentic report about any other Companion's practice, the report of ʿAlqamah and al-Aswad about ʿUmar رضي الله عنه, describes him going down
as the camel goes down
. Since the camel's knees are in its forelegs and touch the ground first, this report doesn't support the knees-first position; it supplies the Companions' own idiom for what the Prophet ﷺ forbade. - The report the majority relies upon, that of Wāʾil رضي الله عنه, is a solitary narration by Sharīk ibn ʿAbdullāh, a truthful man whose memory failed, transmitted by him alone from ʿĀṣim ibn Kulayb, as al-Tirmidhīرحمه الله and al-Dāraquṭnīرحمه الله testify, and unmentioned by the other precise narrators of the same chain. Its supporting reports are broken (Abū Dāwūd 839), unknown and ambiguous (Anas), or ruinously weak (Saʿd's abrogation, and the Ibn Abī Shaybah inversion text).
- And the supposed self-contradiction of the Abū Hurayrah ḥadīth, the engine of the whole opposing case, dissolves once we accept, with al-Jawharīرحمه الله, al-Aṣmaʿīرحمه الله, Ibn Sīdahرحمه الله, Ibn Manẓūrرحمه الله, al-Jāḥiẓرحمه الله, al-Ṭaḥāwīرحمه الله, the report of Surāqah in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, and the plain observation of any camel, that the camel kneels upon its forelegs. The ḥadīth then says one thing, coherently: do not do what the camel does; do the opposite.
- And the practice is attested as the established custom of Madeenah and Shām in the generation of the Successors, by al-Awzāʿī's
I found the people placing their hands before their knees
, endorsed by Mālikرحمه الله as better for khushūʿ, and by Ibn Abī Dāwūd as the position of the people of ḥadīth.
That is the tarjīḥ. It's, I acknowledge, the view of a minority of the fuqahāʾ and of a majority of the muḥaddithūn. I've followed the evidence where it led.
8. What follows in practice
8.1 How I now perform the descent
After the rukūʿ, I rise saying Samiʿa Allāhu li-man ḥamidah, stand upright in composure, and then say Allāhu akbar and lower myself: not collapsing, but descending under control, the way one lowers oneself before a king.
- The hands reach the ground first: palms flat, fingers together and pointing towards the qiblah, placed level with my shoulders or with my ears, as is reported of the sujūd of the Prophet ﷺ [Abū Dāwūd 726, authenticated by Ibn Khuzaymahرحمه الله and Ibn Ḥibbānرحمه الله].
- Then the knees come down.
- Then the forehead and nose together, so that all seven bones bear their share.
- My forearms are raised from the ground and my elbows kept away from my sides, and my belly is held clear of my thighs, in accordance with the ḥadīth of Abū Ḥumayd رضي الله عنه [Abū Dāwūd 734; and see Bukhārī 803].
On either view, the movement should be deliberate. I would rather descend slowly hands-first than drop quickly knees-first, and I suspect the prohibition of the Prophet ﷺ against kneeling as the camel kneels
is aimed at just that abruptness.
8.2 Rising
The mirror question, what leaves the ground first when one rises from the second sujūd to stand, is more open than its counterpart, and I don't think the evidence compels a single answer. The Mālikī formulation delays the hands, so that the knees rise first. The report of Wāʾil says the Prophet ﷺ raised his hands before his knees
, and the ḥadīth of Mālik ibn al-Ḥuwayrith رضي الله عنه shows him supporting himself against the ground with his hands when standing [Bukhārī], which al-Albānīرحمه الله took to indicate rising by means of the hands. Mālikرحمه الله himself is reported to have said that preceding with the hands when standing is something only a young man with little flesh can manage
. My own practice is to push up with the hands and rise with the knees following, without straining. In any case, I regard this as within the latitude of the Sunnah, and I don't think anyone should be corrected over it.
8.3 Dispensations, and the mercy in them
This needs stating clearly, because it's where the fiqh becomes pastoral. Everyone agrees that a person who cannot comfortably place his knees first, the elderly, the obese, the pregnant woman, anyone with knee, hip or back pain, anyone praying on hard stone or thin carpet, should place his hands first. Even those jurists who prefer knees-first grant this without hesitation. What strikes me is that, on the view I've concluded to be preponderant, the dispensation and the optimum coincide: the easier way is also the better way. That is characteristic of this Sharīʿah, and it's one more reason I'm comfortable with my conclusion.
8.4 Etiquette in disagreement
I began this paper with an argument in a masjid, so I want to end with a word about arguments in masjids.
The prayer of the man who goes down knees-first is valid, by consensus as recorded by Ibn Taymiyyahرحمه الله. He is following Abū Ḥanīfahرحمه الله, or al-Shāfiʿīرحمه الله, or Aḥmadرحمه الله in his well-known position, or Ibn Bāzرحمه الله, or Ibn ʿUthaymīnرحمه الله, or the practice of his fathers; the scholars who hold that view aren't fools, after all. They include Ibn al-Qayyimرحمه الله, whose analysis I've contested point by point and for whom I retain enormous admiration.
If I pray behind an imām who descends knees-first, I follow him in the prayer and I don't make a performance of my disagreement. If someone in my congregation does the opposite to me, I don't correct him, because the matter is one of preference within the scope of ijtihād, and because the Prophet ﷺ taught that the difference of his community is a mercy rather than an occasion for enmity. If I am asked, I will explain what I found and I will show my evidence, as I've done here. If I'm not asked, I simply pray.
What I won't do is what I did for years: hold a position I had never examined, and feel superior to those who held the other one.
9. Test yourself, the authentication register, and sources
Test yourself
Click each question to reveal the answer.
1. Which collection filed the hands-first ḥadīth under a chapter heading about placing the knees first?
2. Who wrote "This ḥadīth is stronger than the ḥadīth of Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr", and where?
3. According to the lexicographers and al-Ṭaḥāwīرحمه الله, where are a camel's knees?
4. Whose solitary narration is the Wāʾil report's single point of vulnerability?
5. Did Ibn Taymiyyahرحمه الله consider either manner of descent invalid?
The authentication register
Every citation in this paper was examined before publication. What follows is the register, in three tiers, with the corrections the checking produced.
Verified directly this session AUTHENTICATED
- Sunan Abī Dāwūd 840: wording, grading ṣaḥīḥ (al-Albānī), and the chapter title "How one places his knees before his hands", checked against the printed Sunan.
- The short wording of al-Tirmidhī 269 / Abū Dāwūd 841 ("Does one of you deliberately kneel in his prayer as the camel kneels?").
- Al-Nasāʾī 1091: wording and grading ṣaḥīḥ (al-Albānī).
- Al-Tirmidhī 268: the Wāʾil text, and al-Tirmidhī's own remark, "a ḥasan gharīb ḥadīth; we know of no one who narrated it other than Sharīk".
- Ibn Mājah 882: the Wāʾil report, present as cited.
- Sharīk ibn ʿAbdullāh, Taqrīb al-Tahdhīb: "truthful, but he makes many mistakes, and his memory deteriorated after he assumed the judgeship in Kūfah" (verified as cited, with al-Dhahabī's independent assessment alongside).
- Al-Dāraquṭnī on Sharīk: "not strong in the narrations which he alone reports".
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3906 (Surāqah): "the forelegs of my horse sank into the ground up to the knees".
- Al-Ṭaḥāwī: "the camel's knees are in its forelegs" (Sharḥ Maʿānī al-Āthār 1/254) and the report of ʿAlqamah and al-Aswad on ʿUmar descending "as the camel falls" (1/256). Note: the report is numbered 1419 in some editions and 1528 in others; the paper cites both.
- Ibn Ḥajar, Bulūgh al-Marām no. 245 ("stronger than the ḥadīth of Wāʾil"), with al-Qārī's record that he called the chain jayyid (Mirqāt al-Mafātīḥ 2/570).
- Al-Suyūṭī's grading ṣaḥīḥ (al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr); al-Mubārakfūrī's "ṣaḥīḥ or ḥasan li-dhātihi, all of whose narrators are trustworthy" (Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī; volume numbers vary between editions).
- Al-Nawawī: the chain of the Abū Hurayrah ḥadīth is jayyid, "narrated by Abū Dāwūd and al-Nasāʾī" (al-Majmūʿ).
- Al-Khaṭṭābī: "the ḥadīth of Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr is better established, and it is gentler for the person praying" (Maʿālim al-Sunan, as transmitted in Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ and al-Majmūʿ).
- Second pass, after a reader's query: the alignment of hands-first with Mālik, al-Awzāʿī and the people of ḥadīth, and Aḥmad Shākir's verdict that the hands-first evidences are the sounder, re-confirmed through the fatwa literature (IslamQA 2108; Islamweb 82839).
Confirmed through the recognised scholarship TRANSMITTED
- Ibn Taymiyyah's consensus text (Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā 22/449) and al-Nawawī's "no clear preference evident" (al-Majmūʿ 3/421), both universally transmitted in the fiqh literature.
- Al-Ḥākim's gradings and his remark that his heart inclines to the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿUmar (al-Mustadrak 1/226); Ibn Khuzaymah 627; the suspended report of al-Bukhārī before no. 803.
- Ibn Sayyid al-Nās's assessment as transmitted in Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī.
- Al-Awzāʿī's "I found the people placing their hands before their knees"; Ibn Abī Dāwūd's "that is the position of the people of ḥadīth"; the statements of Mālik; Khalīl's line in the Mukhtaṣar; Ibn Rushd's verdict as cited in Manḥ al-Jalīl.
- Ibn al-Qayyim's passages in Zād al-Maʿād 1/224, including his taghlīb argument and the natural-order argument; Ibn ʿUthaymīn's development of it; Ibn Bāz's holdings.
- The lexicographers' material: al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ), al-Aṣmaʿī, Ibn Sīdah, Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān al-ʿArab), al-Jāḥiẓ (Kitāb al-Ḥayawān); and the Saraqustī runaway-camel reading adopted by al-Albānī.
- The criticisms of the supporting reports: the break in Abū Dāwūd 839; the unknown narrator and Abū Ḥātim's munkar for the Anas report; the matrūk narrators of the Saʿd abrogation chain; al-ʿAẓīmābādī's reply to the inversion theory.
- Ibn al-Mundhir's roll of authorities; al-Bannūrī's summary in Maʿārif al-Sunan.
Kept as the author cited them AS CITED
- Page-level citations to Yāsir al-Fathī's takhrīj of Sunan Abī Dāwūd (9/300–301), including the four transmitters from al-Darāwardī.
- The attribution, by name, of the remark that Sharīk narrated only this one ḥadīth from ʿĀṣim to Yazīd ibn Hārūn; al-Tirmidhī records the remark in less specific form ("it is said").
- The Fath al-Mannān citation (6/291–292) for al-Bayhaqī's "singular narrations of Sharīk al-Qāḍī".
- Edition-sensitive volume and page numbers, kept as cited where editions differ.
Corrections made during authentication
- §6.6: "al-Zaylaʿī ibn al-Turkumānī" corrected to Ibn al-Turkumānī, the author of al-Jawhar al-Naqī.
- §5.5: the spelling "al-Zīlaʿī" normalised to al-Zaylaʿī; the imam of Naṣb al-Rāyah and Tabyīn al-Ḥaqāʾiq is one man.
- Al-Ṭaḥāwī's report on ʿUmar is numbered 1419 in some editions and 1528 in others; both are given.
- Chapter title of Abū Dāwūd 840 confirmed exactly; the paper's "tellingly" stands.
- §6.7: the suggestion that the early editions of Ṣifat Ṣalāt al-Nabī favoured the knees-first view could not be verified against the printed works; the passage has been recast to state only what they verify, that al-Albānī concludes for hands first in each of his treatments of the question.
- Convention on honorifics: the Prophet ﷺ, the Companions, the imams and every quoted authority carry them; narrators under technical assessment, chains, and reference lists do not, so that the grading apparatus stays clean.
References and sources
Primary ḥadīth sources
- Abū Dāwūd, Sunan: 838, 839, 840, 841, 726, 734, 892.
- Al-Tirmidhī, Jāmiʿ: 268, 269.
- Al-Nasāʾī, Sunan (al-Ṣughrā): 1089, 1091, 1155; al-Kubrā: 682.
- Ibn Mājah, Sunan: 882.
- Al-Dārimī, Sunan: 1357, 1360.
- Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad: 8955 (2/381 in older pagination).
- Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ: 757, 803, 812, 3906, and the suspended report before 803; al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr.
- Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ: 397, 490.
- Ibn Khuzaymah, Ṣaḥīḥ: 626, 627, 628 (1/319, 1/342–343).
- Ibn Ḥibbān, Ṣaḥīḥ: 1912 (487 in Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān).
- Al-Ḥākim, al-Mustadrak: 1/226 (no. 821 and related).
- Al-Bayhaqī, al-Sunan al-Kubrā: 2/99–101 (nos. 2635, 2739).
- Al-Dāraquṭnī, Sunan: 1/344–345.
- Ibn Abī Shaybah, Muṣannaf: 1/235 (no. 2702), 1/263.
- Abū Yaʿlā, Musnad: no. 6540.
- Al-Ṭaḥāwī, Sharḥ Maʿānī al-Āthār: 1/254–256 (nos. 1419, 1513, 1528); Mushkil al-Āthār: 1/66, 1/169.
- Al-Baghawī, Sharḥ al-Sunnah: 3/133–135.
- Al-Ḥāzimī, al-Iʿtibār fī al-Nāsikh wa al-Mansūkh: pp. 79–80, 160–161, 324–325.
- ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf: 2/176.
- Ibn al-Mundhir, al-Ishrāf: 2/30; al-Awsaṭ: 3/165.
Ḥadīth criticism, commentaries and takhrīj
- Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Fatḥ al-Bārī: 2/231, 2/241, 2/290–291; Bulūgh al-Marām: no. 245; Taqrib al-Tahdhīb (biography of Sharīk ibn ʿAbdullāh).
- Al-Nawawī, al-Majmūʿ Sharḥ al-Muhadhdhab: 3/394–395, 3/421.
- Al-Mubārakfūrī, Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī: 2/135–139, 4/5–14.
- Al-ʿAẓīmābādī, ʿAwn al-Maʿbūd: 3/71; and Sunan al-Dāraquṭnī (Risālah print) 2/148.
- ʿAlī al-Qārī, Mirqāt al-Mafātīḥ / Sharḥ Mishkāt: 2/570.
- Al-Albānī, Ṣifat Ṣalāt al-Nabī: pp. 52, 81–82, 122; al-Aṣl: Ṣifat Ṣalāt al-Nabī: 2/714–724, 2/729; Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl: 2/75–78, 2/175–180; Ḍaʿīf Abī Dāwūd: 9/233, 9/294, 9/333; Silsilat al-Aḥādīth al-Ḍaʿīfah; Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ: no. 898.
- Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ, Takhrīj Sunan Abī Dāwūd: 2/131; and his edition of Zād al-Maʿād: 1/223–230.
- Aḥmad Shākir, Takhrīj al-Muḥallā; Takhrīj Sunan al-Tirmidhī: 1/58–59.
- Yāsir al-Fathī, Takhrīj Sunan Abī Dāwūd: 9/294–301.
- Al-Ghamrī, Fatḥ al-Mannān: 6/291–292.
- Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-ʿIlal: 1/188.
- Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, as cited in Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī.
- ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Ishbīlī, al-Aḥkām al-Ṣughrā: 243.
- Al-Suyūṭī, al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr: no. 668.
- Al-Zarqānī, Sharḥ al-Mawāhib: 7/320.
- Ibn Ḥajar (ed.), al-Dirāyah fī Takhrīj Aḥādīth al-Hidāyah.
Fiqh works
- Ibn Qudāmah, al-Mughnī: 1/370.
- Al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-Qināʿ: 1/350.
- Al-Mardāwī, al-Inṣāf: 2/48.
- Shams al-Dīn Ibn Qudāmah, al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr: 1/554.
- Al-Zaylaʿī, Tabyīn al-Ḥaqāʾiq (with al-Shalabī's ḥāshiyah): 1/116; Naṣb al-Rāyah.
- Ibn al-Turkumānī, al-Jawhar al-Naqī (marginal to al-Bayhaqī's al-Sunan al-Kubrā): 2/99–101.
- Khalīl ibn Isḥāq, Mukhtaṣar Khalīl; ʿAlīsh, Manḥ al-Jalīl: commentary on the chapter of the prayer; al-Bannānī and al-Kharshī on the same.
- Al-Qarāfī, al-Dhakhīrah: 2/195.
- Ibn Juzayy, al-Qawānīn al-Fiqhiyyah: p. 46.
- Al-Māwardī, al-Ḥāwī al-Kabīr: 2/125.
- Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā: 3/44 (4/129 in some editions).
- Al-Shawkānī, Nayl al-Awṭār: 2/293; Subul al-Salām of al-Ṣanʿānī: 1/187, 1/424.
- Ibn Taymiyyah, Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā: 22/449; al-Fatāwā al-Kubrā: 2/187.
- Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-Maʿād: 1/217–231.
- Ibn Bāz, Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā: 11/61–62, and fatwas nos. 4108, 4921, 17678, 18348, 18424.
- Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā wa al-Rasāʾil: 13/173–174.
- Sayyid Sābiq, Fiqh al-Sunnah: 1/151.
- Al-Durar al-Saniyyah, al-Mawsūʿah al-Fiqhiyyah: "Kayfiyyat al-nuzūl ʿalā al-arḍ".
- Al-Bannūrī, Maʿārif al-Sunan.
- Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī, ʿĀriḍat al-Aḥwadhī: 2/69, 2/90–91.
- Ibn Rushd (al-Jadd), as cited in Manḥ al-Jalīl.
Language, lexicography and natural history
- Al-Jawharī, al-Ṣiḥāḥ (material on ʿurqūb and rukbah).
- Ibn Sīdah, al-Mukhaṣṣaṣ.
- Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab: entry r-k-b.
- Al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Ḥayawān: 2/355.
- Al-Qāsim al-Saraquṣṭī, Gharīb al-Ḥadīth: 1/70.
I've tried to report every source accurately and to state the opposing case at its strongest. Where I've relied on a secondary citation for a classical text, I have said so implicitly by naming the citing author. If any reader finds that I have misattributed a grading, misquoted a text, or overlooked a report that changes the balance of the argument, I would be glad to be corrected. That's how this discipline has always worked, and it is how this paper should be tested too.
A note on conventions. This edition preserves the author's transliteration. "Madeenah" and "Makkah" are the spellings used throughout, and "masjid" is never rendered by its English borrowing. The honorifics follow the blog's standing convention: ﷺ after the Prophet's name, رضي الله عنه/عنها for the Companions, رحمه الله for the scholars. Chains of transmission, grading apparatus and reference lists carry no honorifics, so that the technical record stays clean. The prayer of anyone who descends either way is valid, by consensus; this paper weighs which manner is more beloved, and corrects no one.
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