Prayer is the perfection of bowing and prostration, recitation, humility, and full devotion to it during it (1).
The commentary on the interpretation of His statement, Exalted be His praise: ﴿the Prayer﴾
284- Yaḥyā ibn Abī Ṭālib narrated to me, he said: Yazīd narrated to us, he said: Juwaybir narrated to us, from al-Ḍaḥḥāk regarding His statement: "Who perform the Prayer": He means the obligatory Prayer (2).
As for Prayer (al-ṣalāh), in the speech of the Arabs it means supplication (al-duʿāʾ), as al-Aʿshā said:
She has a guardian who never leaves her home forever;
and if she is slaughtered, he supplicated for her and chanted liturgy (3)
Meaning by that: he supplicated for her; and as al-Aʿshā also said (4):
And he faced the wind at her wine-jar,
and he supplicated over her wine-jar and crossed himself
Notes
- (1) Reports 282 and 283—In Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr (1/77), al-Durr al-Manthūr (1/27), and al-Shawkānī (1/25).\
- (2) Narration 284—Its chain of transmission is very weak. Yaḥyā ibn Abī Ṭālib Jaʿfar ibn al-Zibriqān: al-Dhahabī said: "A well-known traditionist... al-Dāraquṭnī and others declared him trustworthy... and al-Dāraquṭnī was among the most knowledgeable people regarding him." He died in the year 275 AH at 95 years of age. Yazīd: He is Ibn Hārūn, one of the prominent, famous Hadith masters, among the teachers of the Imāms Aḥmad, Ibn Maʿīn, Ibn Rāhwayh, and Ibn al-Madīnī. Juwaybir—in diminutive form: He is Ibn Saʿīd al-Azdī al-Balkhī, very weak; Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān declared him weak, in what al-Bukhārī narrated from him in al-Kabīr (1/2/256) and al-Ṣaghīr (176), and al-Nasāʾī said in al-Ḍuʿafāʾ (8): "Discarded in hadith." And in al-Tahdhīb (2/124): "Abū Qudāma al-Sarakhsī said: Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān said: They were lenient in taking tafsir from people they do not trust in hadith; then he mentioned al-Ḍaḥḥāk, Juwaybir, and Muḥammad ibn al-Sāʾib, and said: These, their hadith is not to be borne, but tafsir is written down from them."\
- (3) His Dīwān: 200, mentioning wine in its jar. And zamzama of the Persian non-Arab (ʿilj): when he forces speech while eating with his mouth closed in a faint voice that can hardly be understood, and their doing so is zamzama. "It was slaughtered" (dhubiḥat), meaning unsealed and its seal removed; at that point he supplicates for fear that it might be spoiled, so he would lose.\
- (4) In the printed edition and manuscript: "And like the statement of the other as well", but the correct reading is that he is al-Aʿshā, and it was a slip of the copyist's pen.
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