When a Companion says «أُمِرْنَا بِكَذَا» (“We were commanded to do this”) or «نُهِينَا عَنْ كَذَا» (“We were forbidden from this”), the agent of the command is not expressly named. In a religious reporting context, such wording is commonly understood as indicating a Prophetic command or prohibition.
Scholars considered the alternative possibility that a particular speaker might refer to a caliph or another responsible authority. An unqualified formula’s normal implication can therefore be affected by specific contextual evidence.
Principle: The passive verbal form itself does not name the commander; hadith classification infers the intended authority from the speaker and the context.