Ibu ‘Umar said he asked Bilal how the Prophet responded to them when they greeted him while he was engaged in prayer, and he replied, “He used to make a sign with his hand.”
Tirmidhi transmitted it. In Nasa'i’s version there is something similar, but Suhaib occurs instead of Bilal.
Before we went to Abyssinia we used to greet God’s Messenger when he was engaged in prayer and he would respond to us, but when we returned from Abyssinia I came to him and found him praying. I greeted him and he did not respond to me, but when he finished his prayer he said, “God creates new commands as He wishes, and one of them is that you must not talk during prayer.” He then returned my greeting and said, “Prayer is solely for the purpose of reciting the Qur’an and making mention of God, so when you are engaged in it let that be what occupies your attention.”
I prayed behind God's Messenger, and on sneezing I said, “Praise be to God, great, good, blessed and abounding in good, as our Lord wishes and is pleased with.” When God's Messenger finished his prayer he moved away and asked, “Who was it who spoke during the prayer?” but no one replied. He asked a second time, but no one replied. He asked a third time, and Rifa'a said, “I did, Messenger of God.” Thereupon the Prophet said, “By Him in whose hand my soul is, over thirty angels raced to it to see which of them would ascend with it.”
Sahl b. Sa‘d reported God's Messenger as saying, “If anything happens to someone during prayer he should say, ‘Glory be to God,’ for clapping applies only to women.” In a version he said, “Saying 'Glory be to God’ applies to men and clapping to women.”
