Morals: none can guide to the best of them except You, and protect me from evil deeds and evil morals—none can protect from their evil except You.(1)

17 - Chapter: Another Type of Remembrance and Supplication Between the Takbīr and the Recitation

897 - ʿAmr ibn ʿAlī informed us, saying: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī narrated to us, saying: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī Salamah narrated to us, saying: My uncle al-Mājishūn ibn Abī Salamah narrated to me, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Aʿraj, from ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Abī Rāfiʿ,

from ʿAlī, may Allah be pleased with him, that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, when he began the prayer, would say the takbīr, then say: "I have turned my face toward Him who created the heavens and the earth, inclining toward truth, and I am not of the--------------------------------------------
(1) A sound ḥadīth, and this chain has been disputed regarding Shuʿayb ibn Abī Ḥamzah as will follow, and it is in al-Sunan al-Kubrā, no. (972).
Al-Ṭabarānī also narrated it in al-Duʿāʾ (499) and Musnad al-Shāmiyyīn (2974) via the path of ʿAmr ibn ʿUthmān with this chain, and in both: "and I am the first of the Muslims."
Al-Dāraquṭnī narrated it in al-Sunan (1139) via the path of Abū Ḥaywah Shurayḥ ibn Yazīd, with it, and in it: "and I am the first of the Muslims." And he added at its end: Shuʿayb said: Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir and others of the jurists of Medina said to me: If you say this statement, then say: "and I am among the Muslims."
And it has been disputed regarding Shuʿayb ibn Abī Ḥamzah:
Abū Ḥaywah Shurayḥ ibn Yazīd al-Ḥaḍramī narrated it from Shuʿayb, from Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir, from Jābir, as in this narration.
And Muḥammad ibn Ḥimyar contradicted him, narrating it from Shuʿayb, from Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir and another, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Aʿraj, from Muḥammad ibn Maslamah, with it, as will follow under numbers (898), (1052), and (1128).
The unnamed narrator is Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Farwah, as in Ibn Rajab's Sharḥ ʿIlal al-Tirmidhī, 2/761.
Al-Dāraquṭnī said in al-ʿIlal, 7/332: What is preserved is from al-Aʿraj, from ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Abī Rāfiʿ, from ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. End quote. And it will follow from this path in the next ḥadīth, and under numbers (1050) and (1126).