Question:

Please confirm the reward to performing fard swalaat in Makkah in Ramadwaan. i understand the reward for a fard swalaat in Makkah (in al Haram) is 100,000. in Ramadwaan, reward for any swalaat is multipled by 70 times. Does that mean performing a swalaat in al Haram during Ramadwaan equals to 7,000,000 reward per swalaat (i.e, 100,000 * 70)?

Fatwa:

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

First of all, it should be mentioned that according to the well-known opinion of the Hanafi School, and the view of the Maaliki and Shaafi’i Schools of jurisprudence, the reward of the prayer in Al-Haraam Mosque to which the Prophet pointed by saying: “…And a prayer in Al-Haraam Mosque is better than 100,000 prayers elsewhere….” [Ahmad, Ibn Maajah and others], includes all the Haram of Makkah [i.e. not only the Al-Haraam mosque], and others said it includes Al-Haram (of Makkah) and the mount of ‘Arafah, while others are of the view that what is meant is the Al-Haraam mosque itself as per the wording of the Hadeeth, and this is the view of the Hanbali School.

The multiplication of the reward includes the obligatory prayer as well as the supererogatory prayer according to the view of many scholars . For instance, Al-Munaawi said: “It appears from the Hadeeth that there is no difference in regard the multiplication of the reward between the obligatory and the supererogatory prayers…”

As regards the multiplication of the obligatory prayer in Ramadan 70 times, and saying that in Al-Haraam mosque it is multiplied 100,000 times, then we first of all say that Allah is Most Generous, and He may give His Slave more than that. However, such a matter cannot be said just by opinion, and the Hadeeth that is mentioned about the multiplication of the reward of the obligatory prayer in Ramadan 70 times is a Hadeeth whose chain of narration is weak. We mean by this the Hadeeth of Salmaan, may Allah be pleased with him, who narrated that the Prophet said: "A great and blessed month has cast a shadow on you …and whoever performs an obligatory act of worship in it, he will be like a person who performed 70 obligatory acts of worship in other times…” This Hadeeth is classified as Dha’eef [weak] by a group of scholars. For instance, Ibn Hajar said about it in “At-Talkhees”: “It is a Dha’eef Hadeeth.” Also, Al-Albaani and Al-‘Aa’thami classified it as Dha’eef. The reason for classifying it as Dha’eef is that its chain of narration includes ‘Ali Ibn Zayd Ibn Jud’aan, and he is a weak narrator according to the scholars.

Allah Knows best.