Salah (the prescribed prayer)

"The prayer" is an obligatory worship, one of Islam's five pillars ¹. In the hadith of Talha ibn Ubayd Allah about the Bedouin the obligation is "five prayers in the day and night", and what exceeds them is voluntary ².

The Qur'an commands establishing the prayer coupled with the zakat: al-Baqara 43. It describes it as "a timed ordinance" upon the believers: al-Nisa' 103. The verse of al-Isra' mentions prayer times: al-Isra' 78.

Ibn Khuzayma gives a chapter on the proof that establishing the prayer is part of Islam, and in it reports Umar's account of Gabriel's question about Islam ³.

Ibn Khuzayma narrates the hadith of Talha ibn Ubayd Allah about the Bedouin with the words "five prayers in the day and night"; the man asked whether anything else was required, and the Prophet ﷺ said: "No, unless you do something voluntarily" ².

The detail of prayer times, its form, its rulings and the schools' disagreements on it will be added in a later batch from the fiqh books, with each position's school identified.

The Sheikh explains that the person praying says, when he gives the closing salam, the plural form 'peace be upon you and God's mercy', that in the tashahhud he says 'peace be upon us and upon the righteous servants of God', and that the singular form of address is used only to the Prophet in 'peace be upon you, O Prophet' ⁶.

He mentions that Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali used to sit before the Prophet and greet him, and that the person praying has his teacher, as it were, in front of him, so he says 'peace be upon you, O Prophet' so that his mind does not wander; he begins with the greetings, prayers and good things belonging to God, then greets the Prophet, then himself (needs_source) ⁷.

The Sheikh takes up the case of someone who begins to pray after years of not praying, giving the example of a man who starts at twenty with some seven or eight years of prayers owed, and he reports of the Hanbalis that once a person has begun to pray nothing is owed for what has passed, noting that Imam Ahmad regarded a person who does not pray as a disbeliever outside the community (needs_source) ⁸.

He says that the majority hold that a person who owes days of prayers should make them up, taking the more cautious course, and mentions that there is an easier view, that he need not make them up but should pray many voluntary prayers, and he thinks that scholarly honesty requires presenting both views ⁴.

He says he leans to the view of the majority, so that a person prays what is owed until he is fairly sure he has made up everything he missed, and if it turns out on the Day of Resurrection that nothing was owed, he hopes that God will count them in his favour ⁵.

He speaks of women's prayers lost because of bleeding, such as the forty days after childbirth, mentions that a mother may tell her daughter to wait forty days without praying or fasting even though the bleeding may stop after a week, and suggests, as the more cautious course, that a make-up prayer be prayed before the obligatory prayer (needs_source) ⁹.

He urges making up missed prayer, fasting and zakat because they are a debt owed to God, then mentions the rights of people, the nearest being the right of one's wife and children not to be fed from what is unlawful or doubtful, and then a person's repentance with himself and his heart ¹⁰.

The Sheikh says that an imam's error in recitation does not invalidate the prayer and that he should not be blamed for it, and he mentions that sins fall away as the leaves of a tree fall (needs_source) ¹¹.

He holds that error in recitation is to be expected, because the Qur'an is precious and anyone may slip over a vowel or a shortening, so one should not be strict about it, and he says that the follower has no prostration of forgetfulness of his own but follows his imam ¹².

He says that the imam is a guarantor and the muezzin is trusted, that the imam bears responsibility for the prayer of those behind him, and that the follower follows him in the prostration of forgetfulness even if he himself did not forget (needs_source) ¹³.