while Uthman was besieged, and no one denied it; Uthman approved of that and ordered that the prayer be performed with them. Humayd ibn Abd al-Rahman narrated from Ubayd Allah ibn Adi ibn al-Khiyar that he entered upon Uthman while he was besieged and said: "You see what has befallen you, and you are the Imam of the general public, [and an Imam of discord is leading us in prayer, and I feel uneasy about praying behind him] (16)." He replied: "Prayer is among the best of deeds that people perform; so when they do good, do good with them, and when they do evil, avoid their evil." This was narrated by al-Bukhari (17) and al-Athram, and this is the wording of al-Athram's narration. Ahmad said: "Discord occurred in al-Sham for nine years, and they still held the Friday prayer." Malik narrated in "al-Muwatta" (18) from Abu Ja'far the Reader that he saw the owner of the Maqsura during the time of discord when the prayer was called, so he went out following the people, saying: "Who will lead the people in prayer?" until he reached Abdullah ibn Umar, and Abdullah ibn Umar said to him: "You go forward and lead the people in prayer." This is because it is one of the individual obligations (fara'id al-a'yan), so the permission of the Imam is not a condition for it, like the Dhuhr prayer, and because it is a prayer that resembles other prayers. What they mentioned as a consensus is not valid, for people establish Friday prayers in villages without the permission of anyone. Furthermore, even if it were true that it only happened with permission, it would be a consensus on the permissibility of what occurred, not on the prohibition of what is other than it, just like the Hajj, which the Imams supervise, yet their permission is not a condition for it. If we say: "It is a condition," and the Imam does not grant permission for it (19), it is not permissible for them to perform the Friday prayer, and they should perform the Dhuhr prayer instead. If he grants permission for its establishment and then dies, his permission becomes void upon his death (19). If they perform the prayer and then it turns out that he had died before that, does their prayer suffice them? There are two narrations regarding this: the most correct of which is that it suffices them, because the Muslims in regions distant from the seat of the Imam do not repeat the Friday prayers they performed after his death, and we do not know of anyone who disapproved of that for them, so it constitutes a consensus. And because the obligation of repetition