(If you had seen me and Iblīs, I reached out with my hand, and I continued to strangle him until I felt the coolness of his saliva between these two fingers of mine: the thumb and the one next to it. If it were not for the supplication of my brother Sulaymān, he would have been tied to a pillar of the mosque, and the children of Madīnah would have played with him. So whoever among you can ensure that nothing stands between him and the qiblah, let him do so.) Narrated by Aḥmad (3/82-83): Abū Aḥmad told us: Masarrah ibn Maʿbad told us: Abū ʿUbayd, the companion of Sulaymān, told me: I saw ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yazīd al-Laythī standing and praying, wearing a black turban, letting its end hang from behind, with a yellow beard. I intended to pass in front of him, but he pushed me back and then said: Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī told me that the Messenger of Allāh (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) stood and prayed the morning prayer while he was behind him, and he recited, but his recitation became confused. When he finished his prayer, he said: ... and he mentioned it. I say: Its isnād is good, its men are trustworthy, the men of Muslim; except for Masarrah ibn Maʿbad, who is truthful but has mistakes, as mentioned in "al-Taqrīb." From this perspective, it was narrated by Abū Dāwūd (699) in an abbreviated form, and it is in my book "Ṣaḥīḥ Abī Dāwūd" (696). It has supporting narrations, some of which were mentioned by Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah in "Majmūʿ al-Fatāwá" (1/170), one of them being from the narration of al-Nasāʾī from ʿĀʾishah in an abbreviated form with the story of strangling the devil. He said: "Its isnād is according to the conditions of al-Bukhārī, as mentioned by Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Maqdisī in his (Mukhtārah), which is better than (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Ḥākim)." I say, and in it is the fiqh of the obligation of taking a sutrah in prayer, even if in a place