He was asked about the prayer of tasbih.

The questioner : Are you busy, O Shaykh, so you cannot speak?

The Shaykh : Please, go ahead. What do you have?

The questioner : We were reviewing and discussing the hadith of the prayer of tasbih, and it seems some students of knowledge are saying something about this hadith. When we discussed the chain of narration, they were talking about the text and mentioning that the text has been criticized, because this prayer has no prior or customary form. So the question is: has anyone spoken about the text?

The Shaykh : Some of them have spoken, as you have quoted from some of them.

The questioner : Do you mean they spoke about the text?

The Shaykh : I do not say they spoke about the text; I say some of them spoke, just as you spoke about some of them. That is, they said that this prayer contradicts the known and established forms of prayer. That is what they said.

The questioner : Who among the famous or well-known in this discipline?

The Shaykh : Our Imam Ibn Taymiyyah, and before him Ibn al-Jawzi.

The questioner : He narrated it in his book of fabrications.

The Shaykh : Yes. But his statement is refuted, because this objection is a logical, rational objection, and it has no value in the critique of hadith texts. Perhaps you will recall with me the description of the eclipse prayer, which is two units, with two bowings in each unit. This prayer is distinguished from all customary prayers. So what harm is there, once the hadith is established from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), even though the Hanafis contradict this manner? This critique is of no use at all. It is obligatory for every hadith scholar who engages in the critique of hadiths to critique them in terms of their chains of narration, not in terms of their texts. However, if a hadith is not established in terms of its chain, then the critic, if he has logic, may turn to critiquing the text as well, so that the hadith becomes weak in chain and denounceable in text.
And beware, you and others, of being deceived by what is in the introduction of Ibn al-Salah and other books of terminology, that the chain of a hadith may be authentic while its text is not authentic. Beware, and beware again, because this statement, in its absolute form, is not correct in reality. It must be patched up by interpreting it so that the statement becomes sound. That is, it means the chain is authentic, disregarding some of the conditions of an authentic chain, one of which is that it not be anomalous or defective. The chain may be described by someone as authentic, and he is excused because the defect was not apparent to him. And the defect, as you may know, if Allah wills, is divided into two categories:
An apparent defect and a hidden defect. The second type is the one that is hidden from many scholars, let alone others. So if one of them says: "The chain of the hadith may be authentic," then with this interpretation, it is either an authentic chain free from any defect, and the text is denounceable and weak. This does not exist in the world. If you know this reality, then as I said earlier, the critic should turn to the hadith by critiquing the chain. If the chain is sound, the text is sound.
Otherwise, we open the door for people who claim that Islam is nothing but the Qur'an, because they found many hadiths that are not authentic, especially when they opened the door to critiquing texts, which some contemporary imitators of the disbelieving Orientalists call "internal critique." They call the critique of the text "internal critique." So when they expanded the critique, very little of the hadith remained sound for them. Therefore, they also turned away from this little and were content with the Qur'an, so they exited Islam in the name of the Qur'an.
In summary, the hadith of tasbih does not fall below the rank of hasan (good), and in my view it is sahih (authentic) by the totality of its routes. It is sufficient for the student of knowledge to know that one of the Imams of the Salaf, Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak, the Imam of the Imam of the Sunnah, Imam Ahmad, used to perform this prayer that those people who critique its text want to call an anomalous or denounceable hadith. A hadith like this, which has come through many routes, some of which have only slight weakness that is strengthened by the others, and that Imam acted upon it, so do not be deceived by what is quoted from some of the Imams of Islam regarding weakening its chains or judging the chain as denounceable. That is what I have.

The questioner : Regarding what you said, it seems they went to the introduction of Ibn al-Salah, so we were talking and he mentioned that it could be like what you said, that the chain is authentic and the text has denunciation. They gave an example of a hadith in al-Bukhari. I have not looked into it, but during the dialogue and discussion, he was saying: Is this in al-Bukhari?

The Shaykh : Yes, this is in Sahih al-Bukhari, yes.

The questioner : It seems they are saying its chain is authentic and it is in al-Bukhari, yet the scholars denounced this text.

The Shaykh : This is a valid example of what I told you earlier, that the intended meaning is that the chain may be authentic, or the text may be anomalous or denounceable, meaning authentic in terms of the view, the view of weakness in this chain. But when you gather the routes of the hadith, it becomes clear that there is a defect or anomaly in it. At that point, the one who has clarified that defect or anomaly does not say, "This is an authentic chain," how can it be, when the one with the relationship, who is Maimunah, says: And therefore, if it is said that the chain of this hadith is authentic, it must be explained that its narrators are the narrators of the authentic books, and that is the case, so it is authentic. However, it is not free from a decisive defect. If it were not for the hadith of Maimunah, which explicitly states that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) married her while she was lawful, we would have said, as Ibn Abbas said regarding the hadith in the two Sahihs, that he married her while she was in a state of ihram, because we do not have anything that criticizes and clarifies the anomaly of this hadith. But since the hadith of Maimunah has come through several routes that he (peace and blessings be upon him) married her while she was lawful... Do you have something else, or shall I say, peace be upon you?