Salat al-Eidayn fi al-Musalla hiya al-Sunna
- Author died
- 1420 AH
- Editions
- al-Maktab al-Islāmī
Salat al-Eidayn fi al-Musalla hiya al-Sunna (Praying the Two Eid Prayers in the Prayer Ground is the Sunnah) is a legal treatise by the hadith scholar Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (d. 1420 AH / 1999 CE) examining the established practice and legal status of holding Eid prayers in an open-air prayer ground (musalla) outside the town rather than inside mosques .
Background and Composition
Al-Albani originally intended to compose a comprehensive work addressing all the legal rulings of the two Eid prayers, patterned after his treatise Salat al-Tarawih . However, because Eid al-Fitr was only a few days away when he was preparing the text, he restricted the treatise to proving the specific question of the musalla .
The treatise was written in part to refute polemical arguments published in a booklet titled al-Isabah, whose authors opposed holding Eid prayers in the open prayer ground and falsely attributed to al-Albani the claim that Eid prayer inside mosques is invalid . The text appears in full under the title Salat al-Eidayn fi al-Musalla kharij al-balad hiya al-Sunna and was grouped with several related refutatory treatises by the author .
Contents and Legal Arguments
The treatise sets out the hadith evidence demonstrating that the Prophet ﷺ consistently went out to the musalla outside Medina to perform the Eid prayers, leaving his own mosque despite its special virtue . Al-Albani argues that this practice constitutes definitive evidence that performing the prayer in the open ground is the superior Sunnah according to the majority of scholars, with the sole historical exception being Mecca, where the inhabitants prayed inside the Sacred Mosque .
To substantiate his position, al-Albani cites rulings and commentary from major scholars across legal schools, including al-Baghawi in Sharh al-Sunnah, al-Nawawi in Sharh Sahih Muslim, Ibn Qudamah in al-Mughni, and Ibn al-Hajj al-Fasi in al-Madkhal . He addresses the view associated with al-Shafi'i—that performing the prayer in the mosque is preferable if it is spacious enough to accommodate all the town's inhabitants—arguing that modern city mosques cannot accommodate the entire population, and that routinely dispersing people across separate local mosques without necessity constitutes an unjustified religious innovation (bid'ah) .
Al-Albani also undertakes hadith critical analysis in the work, including evaluating the narration reported from Abu Hurayrah regarding praying Eid in the mosque due to rain; al-Albani graded this narration weak, rejecting the authentications of al-Hakim al-Naysaburi and al-Dhahabi .
Publication
The work was first printed in Damascus in 1373 AH . A second edition was published in 1404 AH (1984 CE) by al-Maktab al-Islami (Beirut and Amman) in a 48-page medium-octavo volume .
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