4985 — Musaddad narrated to us, Isa ibn Yunus narrated to us, Mis'ar ibn Kidam narrated to us, from Amr ibn Murrah, from Salim ibn Abi al-Ja'd, who said: A man said — Mis'ar said: I think he was from Khuza'ah — "Would that I had prayed and found rest." It seemed they disapproved of that, so he said: I heard the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, say: "O Bilal, establish the prayer, give us rest through it."(1)

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It is in the Musnad of Ahmad (4572) and Sahih Ibn Hibban (1541).

In Ibn al-Athir's al-Nihayah (under 'atama): al-Azhari said: The owners of flocks in the desert bring the camels to rest in the evening, then make them kneel in their resting place until they enter the darkness of night, i.e., they enter into the night's gloom. The Bedouins used to call the evening prayer the prayer of 'atamah, naming it by the time, so he forbade them from following them in that, and preferred for them to adhere to the name uttered by the tongue of the Shariah.

Ibn Hajar transmitted in al-Fath 2/45 from al-Qurtubi from someone else: They were only forbidden from that as a matter of propriety for this religious, legal act of worship, lest it be called by a name that is a term for a worldly practice, namely the milking session they used to hold at that time and call 'atamah.

Al-Sindi said in his annotation on the Musnad, regarding his words: "Let not the Bedouins overcome you..." etc., meaning: The name that Allah mentioned in His Book for this prayer is the name 'isha' (night prayer), and the Bedouins call it 'atamah, so do not use that name excessively, for it involves the Bedouins overcoming you in frequency, and using the name 'isha' is in accordance with the Qur'an. Thus the intent is to forbid excessive use of the name 'atamah, not its use altogether, for indeed the use of this name also appears in hadiths. Then he mentioned the reason for the Bedouins' use of the name 'atamah in his words: "And they — i.e., the Bedouins — yu'timun" — from a'tama: when one enters into the 'atamah, which is the darkness — meaning: they delay the prayer and enter into the darkness of night because of the camels and their milking. And Allah knows best.

(1) Its chain is sound; its narrators are trustworthy, the narrators of the two Shaykhs, except Musaddad, who is among the narrators of al-Bukhari. However, there is disagreement over Salim ibn Abi al-Ja'd regarding its chain: sometimes he narrates it from a man from Aslam from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, as in Ahmad's Musnad (23088) — and in the narrator's version here it states that the man was from Khuza'ah — and other times he narrates it from Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah, from a maternal relative of his who was an Ansari.