Raising one’s hands at the opening of prayer, before bowing and after standing straight again is so well established via Hadiths of the Prophet, reports about how the first four ‘Rightly Guided’ caliphs prayed and from the opinions of other leading Companions, that Ibn Mas‘ud’s report simply cannot be true. Bayhaqi himself introduces the possible explanation that, if Hadiths like Ibn Mas‘ud’s were historically reliable, they must be cases of abrogation. They must represent some earlier form of the prayer before the Prophet gave it its final shape. He notes that in the early days of the
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