The hadith collections preserve the Tashahhud in several closely related versions, and the legal schools each adopted one. The version of Ibn Mas'ud is preferred by the Hanafi and Hanbali schools, the version of Ibn Abbas, which opens with greetings blessed and prayers good, by the Shafi'i school, and a version transmitted in Malik's Muwatta from Umar by the Maliki school. The differences are small, a word added or reordered, and the structure is identical, greeting to God, greeting to the Prophet, greeting to the righteous, testimony. Jurists discussed the variants with complete calm, treating them as parallel prophetic teachings rather than rivals, a useful window on how the tradition handles multiplicity in its liturgy.
A popular tradition, found in later commentary rather than the canonical collections, frames the opening exchange as a dialogue from the Prophet's night ascent, the greetings offered by Muhammad to God and returned upon him and the righteous, a framing beloved in devotional literature though not presented there as the text's documented origin. Practice adds its own detail, the raised forefinger at the words of testimony, understood as a bodily declaration of God's oneness, with schools differing over whether the finger points, moves or rests, one more example of a shared text worn smooth by use into slightly different local shapes.