Is there a hadith in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad regarding placing the hand on the chest after rising from bowing?

Abu Layli: Some students of knowledge have claimed that there is a hadith in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad that explicitly mentions placing the hands on the chest after bowing. How authentic is this claim?

The Shaykh : This is a mistake and a misunderstanding of the hadith to which he is referring.The questioner : It is in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad with a phrase that does not mean placing the hands after bowing. Because after he mentioned what he witnessed from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) regarding the opening of the prayer, the recitation, and the bowing, he mentioned a clause that he connected to what came before it. He said, "And I saw him" after mentioning the recitation and the bowing. He said: This is a clause connected to the first clause. If the hadith had said, "then he placed," meaning after he raised his head from the bowing and then placed his right hand over his left, it would have been explicit evidence for that. This is despite the possibility of introducing a hidden defect, and many hadiths have hidden defects that only some of the early hadith scholars notice. We might address this if the hadith had said, "then he placed his right hand over his left," in which case there would be a large scope for using it as evidence for placing the hands in the second standing. But the hadith did not come that way in the Musnad of Ahmad; rather, it came as "and I saw him placing his right hand" or "he places his right hand over his left." This is a matter of connecting one clause to another. This is the first point. Second, it is known to those with knowledge of the Arabic language, its styles, and its etiquette that the conjunction "wa" (and) does not imply sequence... He is truthful when he says, "I saw him placing his right hand over his left," but he did not specify the location. He did not say "first, then," nor did he say "at the beginning, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) used to place his hands in the second standing, or after the bowing, or something similar." As for what I mentioned earlier, if the phrase had been explicit about placing the hands after the bowing, we would have said that the hadith is defective due to anomaly, because this hadith, as I recall, is from the narration of Wail ibn Hujr. The hadith of Wail ibn Hujr came through various routes from him, the most famous of which is the route of Asim ibn Kulayb from his father from Wail ibn Hujr. In that route, and in the other routes mentioned in the Musnad of Ahmad and others, it is only mentioned in the first standing. If such a hadith came and someone wanted to establish with it the placing of the hands after the bowing, and this, as we said, is not sound from the Arabic perspective, but assuming that from the Arabic stylistic perspective it implies placing the hands after the bowing, we would say: if there are two instances of placing the hands, one in the first standing and one in the second standing, where is the placing in the first standing? This narrator did not mention it; he only mentioned the placing in the second standing. This is an anomaly that contradicts the hadiths of Wail through the route of Asim ibn Kulayb from his father from Wail, and other routes mentioned in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad. And this, in reality... - Please, Professor, your place here is waiting for you -

The questioner : I was invited to dinner, so when this request came, I said, "This is my Shaykh's request."

The Shaykh : May Allah reward you with good... I said, and a thing is mentioned by its like. This hadith in the Musnad of Ahmad is similar, and it is also from the hadith of Wail ibn Hujr.